Maxwell v. Bugbee

Citations

• 250 U.S. 525
• 40 S. Ct. 2
• 63 L. Ed. 1124
• 1919 U.S. LEXIS 1772

Syllabus

<p>Article IV, § 2, par. 1, of the Constitution, was intended to prevent discrimination by the several States against citizens of other States in respect of the fundamental privileges of citizenship. P. 537.</p> <p>The Fourteenth Amendment recognizes a distinction between citizenship of the United States and citizenship of one of the States, and its purpose in declaring that no State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States is not to transfer to the Federal Government the protection of civil rights inherent in state citizenship but to secure those privileges and immunities that owe their existence to the Federal Government, its national character, its Constitution, or its laws. P. 537. Slaughter-House Cases, 16 Wall. 36.</p> <p>These privileges and immunities provisions do not prevent a State from taxing the privilege of succeeding by will or inheritance from a non-resident decedent to property within its jurisdiction.' P. 538.</p> <p>Qumre: Whether these privileges and immunities clauses are applicable when the alleged discrimination (in a state inheritance tax law) is based not on citizenship but on the residence or non-residence of the decedent? Id.</p> <p>The fact that a state tax on the succession to local property of a nonresident decedent is measured by the ratio in value of such property to the entire estate, including real and personal property in other States, does not make it a tax on the property beyond the jurisdiction and thus obnoxious to the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. P. 539.</p> <p>The difference between the relations to the State of resident and. nonresident testators or intestates affords justification within the equal protection provision of the Fourteenth Amendment for measuring succession taxes in different ways. P. 540.</p> <p>The question of equal protection must be decided between resident and non-resident decedents as classes, rather than by the inci