Williamson's Estate

Citations

• 153 Pa. 508
• 26 A. 246
• 1893 Pa. LEXIS 1141

Syllabus

<p>Taxation — Assessments—Penalty for failure to make return — Aet, 1885.</p> <p>Under the act of June 30, 1885, P. L. 193, a person has the right to decline to make a return of personal property for the purposes of taxation ; the act fixes with exactness the consequence of such refusal; the assessor must supply the want of the return with his estimate; to this fifty per cent must be added, and this sum stands in lieu of the return as the basis for taxation.</p> <p>Board of Revision of Taxes of Phila. — Powers—Assessments.</p> <p>The Board of Revision of Taxes of Philadelphia has power to make a valuation of property for the purposes of taxation only where the assessors have omitted to make it.</p> <p>In the year 1888, Williamson failed to make any return of his personal estate to the assessors for taxation. During the same year the assessors estimated his taxable personal estate at $45,000 and assessed him with that amount. The Board of Revision of Taxes, when they came to revise the assessment, added fifty per cent by way of penalty, and left the assessment as corrected and revised by them to stand at $67,500. The taxes as thus computed were placed in the hands of the receiver for collection. Two or three months after this was done, and in the following year, Williamson died. The inventory of his estate showed personal property amounts ing to $2,500,000. In April, 1889, six months after decedent should have made his return, the Board of Revision made an assessment, without the intervention of the assessors, fixing the amount of the personal estate at $2,500,000, and adding a penalty of fifty per cent. Held, that the second assessment was improper and void, and that the city having received the whole amount of the tax under the first assessment could recover nothing more from the estate.</p> <p>Collateral inheritance tax — Income first year after death of decedent.</p> <p>The income derived from the estate of a decedent during the first year after his death, is not