Looney, Attorney General of Texas v. Crane Co

Citations

• 245 U.S. 178
• 38 S. Ct. 85
• 62 L. Ed. 230
• 1917 U.S. LEXIS 1728

Syllabus

<p>• Neither the right of a State to attach conditions when licensing a sister state corporation to do local business, nor its power to tax the corporation in respect of such business, when licensed, can sustain impositions which, in the guise of permit charges or franchise or excise • taxes, result in direct burdens on interstate commerce or in the taxation of property beyond the confines and jurisdiction of the State.</p> <p>■ These principles, repeatedly affirmed by the court, are in nowise qualified by Baltic Mining Co. v. Massachusetts, 231 U. S. 68, and other recent cases, involving particular state statutes which were not inherently repugnant to the commerce clause or the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and which, because of their own restrictive provisions, avoided such repugnancy in their necessary operation and effect. Those cases lend no sanction to the proposition that the duty of enforcing the Constitution may depend, upon the degree of violation or of resulting wrong.</p> <p>In 1889, Texas exacted of foreign corporations a charge, graduated upon capital stock, but limited to $200, for a permit to do business for 10 years. In 1893, a so-called franchise tax of $10 per annum was exacted of domestic and licensed foreign corporations alike, which was increased in 1897 to a maximum of $50 for domestic corporations, while for foreign corporations the minimum was raised to $25, and the tax was otherwise calculated by fixed percentages upon capital stock without maximum limit. After some intervening modification, it was enacted in 1907, as to both classes of corporations, that, in case the capital stock, issued and outstanding, plus surplus and undivided profits, should exceed the capital stock authorized, the franchise tax should be calculated upon the aggregate of such amounts. In the same year the permit provisions were altered by abolishing the maximum limit ($200) and increasing the percentages on authorized capital stock. An Illinois manu