Kansas City, Fort Scott & Memphis Railway Co. v. Botkin

Citations

• 240 U.S. 227
• 36 S. Ct. 261
• 60 L. Ed. 617
• 1916 U.S. LEXIS 1444

Syllabus

<p>The State cannot lay a tax on interstate commerce in any form by imposing it either upon business constituting such commerce or on ' the privilege of engáging in it, or upon the receipts as such derived ' therefrom.</p> <p>Whether a state tax has such a direct relation to interstáte commerce as to be an exercise of power prohibited by the commerce clause depends upon the operation and effect of the tax as enforced and not upon the manner in which the taxing scheme has been characterized.</p> <p>The State has authority to tax á domestic corporation for the privilege of being a corporation; and such a tax is not necessarily invalid . because measured by the capital stock, part of which may represent capital not subject to the taxing power of the State.</p> <p>A- State is not debarred from imposing a tax upon the granted' privilege of being a corporation, because the corporation may be engaged in interstate commerce.</p> <p>The validity of each tax must be decided upon its own facts, and a tax within the taxing power of the State will not be condemned as repugnant to the Féderal Constitution unless its natural operation and effect render it a prohibited exaction. '</p> <p>The tax imposed'by chapter 135, Kansas.Laws of 1913, on the privilege of being a corporation is not laid upon interstate commerce or recéipts therefrom or fluctuating' with the volume of interstate business, but is simply graduated according to paid up capital with a reasonable maximum; and it is not, as to a domestic corporation engaged in both interstate and intrastate commerce, invalid either as a violation' of the commerce clause as taxing interstate commerce or of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, as taxing property beyond the jurisdiction of the State.</p> <p>95 Kansas, 261, affirmed.</p>