US SUPREME COURT DECISIONS

1. A railroad 455 miles long, 42 miles of which were in a state other than that by which it was incorporated, held to be "doing business" within the state where the 42 miles were, within the meaning of an act taxing all railroad companies "doing business within the state and upon whose road freight may be transported."

2. It being settled law that the language by which a state surrenders its right of taxation, must be clear and unmistakable, a grant by one state to a corporation of another state to exercise a part of its franchise within the limits of the state making the grant, as above said, and laying a tax upon it at the time of the grant, does not of itself preclude a right of further taxation by the same state.

The question in this case was that of the right and intention of the State of Pennsylvania to impose tax upon the gross receipts of the Erie Railway Company, a corporation created by the State of New York and having a portion of its road in Pennsylvania. The case was thus:

In May, 1868, the Legislature of Pennsylvania passed an act, by the seventh and eighth sections of which there was imposed a tax of three-fourths of one percent upon the chanrobles.com-red

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gross receipts

"of every railroad company, steamboat company, now or hereafter doing business in the state, and upon whose works freight may be transported, whether by such company or individuals."

Under this section, the accounting officers of the State of Pennsylvania settled an account against the Erie Railway Company. From this settlement an appeal was taken, in pursuance of the practice of that state, by the company to the Dauphin County Court, where a verdict for $76,788 was rendered in favor of the state, which, upon an appeal to the supreme court of the state, was sustained. From this judgment of the Supreme Court, a writ of error brought the case to this Court.

It was decided by this Court, as the reader will remember, in the case of the State Tax on Railway Gross Receipts, [Footnote 1] that a tax upon the gross receipts of a railroad company is such a tax as it is within the power of the state to impose.

Not denying the effect of this decision, the Erie Railway Company still contended that the tax in question was not legal, for two reasons: 1st., because this company was not intended by the legislature to be embraced within the terms of the Act of 1868, and 2d, because the terms and conditions of former acts of the legislature had created an agreement with the company that it should be exempt from taxation except to a limited extent and in a specified manner, which was not the manner in which it was now taxed.

To understand these positions, it is necessary to give a short statement both about the company and about the acts of Pennsylvania, whose meaning was under consideration.

The Erie Railroad Company was chartered by an act of the Legislature of the State of New York, April 24, 1832, with power to construct a railroad from the City of New York to Lake Erie, through the southern tier of counties of the State of New York. By an act passed in 1846 it was authorized to locate a certain portion of its road in the State of Pennsylvania. By subsequent foreclosure and legislation chanrobles.com-red

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the present Erie Railway Company was formed, with all the rights and authorities conferred upon the Erie Railroad Company.

On the 16th of February, 1841, the Legislature of Pennsylvania, by an act in which it is recited that for the purpose of avoiding certain engineering difficulties in one of the counties of New York, through which the straightest course of the road of the Erie Railroad Company lay, it was desirable that the road should be located for a distance of about fifteen miles through the County of Susquehanna, a county on the north line of Pennsylvania, enacted that the said road might be located upon such route through said Susquehanna County as the company should find to be expedient. The Company was authorized to enter upon and take the lands of individuals; also gravel, stone, or wood, for the purpose of constructing the road; paying for the same if the amount was agreed upon; if not, to be ascertained by an appraisement of the damages as in the act is prescribed. Nothing of any sort was said in this act about taxation.

By a second act, an Act of March 27, 1846, authority was further given to this company to construct its road through another of the northern counties of Pennsylvania -- the County of Pike -- for a distance not exceeding thirty miles, with the same general powers and under the same general restrictions.

This act contained two provisions in reference to taxation.

One was in section five of the act, by which it was enacted that, after the road should be completed through the Counties of Pike and Susquehanna, an accurate account of the cost of that portion of the road should be filed in the office of the auditor general, and that, after the road should be completed to Dunkirk, or extended by any other improvement to Lake Erie, the company should annually pay into the Treasury the sum of $10,000.

The other was in the sixth section, which provided that the stock of the company to an amount equal to the cost of the construction of that part of their road situate in Pennsylvania chanrobles.com-red

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"shall be subject to taxation by this Commonwealth in the same manner and at the same rate as other similar property is or may be subject; . . . and the company shall annually make a statement of its affairs . . . and of the business done upon said road during the previous year, said statement to contain a full and accurate account of the number of passengers, amount and weight of produce, merchandise, lumber, coal, and minerals transferred on said road east of Dunkirk and west of Piermont."

But in neither section five nor section six was there any engagement in terms not to tax the road in any other way than by them was done.

The whole length of the Erie railroad is 455 miles, 42 1/2 miles of which are in the State of Pennsylvania, in Pike and Susquehanna Counties.

The gross receipts of the company upon its main line (of which this 42 1/2 miles were a part) in the year 1869 were $9,266,349.33. Of this sum, 42.5/455ths, viz., $884,988.38, was adjudged to be the portion taxable in Pennsylvania under the statute imposing the tax in question. Upon this sum, three-fourths of one percent was imposed as a tax, and in this manner the sum of the tax for several years, with interest and expenses, was made up. chanrobles.com-red

Page 88 U. S. 497