Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance v. Wisconsin

Citations

• 247 U.S. 132
• 38 S. Ct. 444
• 62 L. Ed. 1025
• 1918 U.S. LEXIS 1964

Syllabus

<p>The “license fee,” laid by Wisconsin on domestic “level-premium” life insurance companies doing business in the State, of 3% of the gross income from all sources during the year, except rents from real estate and premiums collected outside Wisconsin on policies of non-residents, as construed by the Supreme Court of the State, is a commutation tax in lieu of all other taxes on the personal property of the companies taxable in Wisconsin.</p> <p>Assuming, but not deciding, that the foreign investment business of such a company, involving shipments of securities, correspondences, etc.', beyond the State, amounts to interstate commerce, such a tax casts no burden upon such commerce, where the gross receipts are in effect used as a fair measure of the value of the property and franchise taxable, but not otherwise taxed, within the State.</p> <p>A tax on life insurance business is not a tax on interstate commerce.</p> <p>It is not an arbitrary discrimination against domestic life insurance corporations, amounting to a denial of the equal protection of the laws, for a State to tax them by taking a percentage of their gross receipts, while exacting a fixed and comparatively slight fee from . similar foreign corporations for the privilege of doing local business of the same kind. Southern Ry. Co. v. Greene, 216 U. S. 400, distinguished.</p> <p>Neither is such arbitrary discrimination involved in imposing a license or privilege tax upon domestic old-line, level-premium companies, while exempting fraternal societies, having lodge organizations and insuring only the lives of their own members.</p>