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Home > Journals > Michigan Law Review > MLR > Volume 6 > Issue 4 (1908)

 

Abstract

The questions of taxation have furnished a cause of warfare, armed or wordy, since the meaning of government has been known. The possibility of our Constitution was due, superficially, to the imposition of a tax; its adoption, in great measure, to the absence of a tax, to the lack of a taxing power in the Confederation. Since the adoption of the Constitution with its grant of a taxing power, much of our legislative disagreement has centered on the interpretation of that grant. The case of McCray v. United States, opens up a comparatively untrammeled field of dispute. The basis of the case is an act of Congress taxing the production of colored oleomargarine. The Act of 1886 having defined oleomargarine, as used in the act, declared, after various other provisions, "that upon oleomargarine which shall be manufactured and sold, or removed for consumption or use, there shall be assessed and collected a tax of two cents per pound, to be paid by the manufacturer thereof." A later act was passed in 1902 upon the same subject. It in many respects expressly amended the act of 1886, the provisions in point being a decrease in the tax on uncolored oleomargarine from 2c to 1/4c per pound, and an increase to I0c per pound on that which was in any way colored to resemble butter. This rendered the cost of production so high as absolutely to preclude sale of the product ; consequently did away entirely with the traffic in colored oleomargarine, and became quite impotent for the production of revenue. The constitutional validity of the imposition was attacked in the courts on various grounds, the chief among them being the right of Congress to levy a tax having for its object not revenue, but destruction. The court held that, in as much as Congress could constitutionally levy a tax on oleomargarine, it might make the amount thereof whatsoever it choose; and that the judiciary could not constitutionally inquire into the intent of Congress, although the effect of the tax was destruction, it being on its face a valid tax.

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