State Tax Commission v. Eureka Life Insurance

Urner, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The appellee, a domestic life insurance company, claimed that in the valuation of its capital stock for the purposes of taxation in 1924, it was entitled to a deduction of the amount of its investments in mortgages of Maryland real estate, under a provision of section 162 of article 81 of the Code of 1912 (section 166A, Code of 1924), as amended by chapter 225 of the Acts of 1924, which became effective on the first ³⁸² day of June in that year. This claim of exemption was disallowed hy the State Tax Commission, hut its decision was-reversed on appeal by the company to the Baltimore City Court. The propriety of the latter ruling is questioned .on an appeal to this' Court by the State Tax Commission and the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore.

Under the provisions of section 157 of article 81 of the Code, it is the duty of the appellee, by the fifteenth day of March in each year, to report to the State Tax Commission a true statement of the number of shares of its capital stock, and the par value of each share, with such information in regard to its value as may be required by the Commission, as of the first day of January of each year, and the Commission is directed, annually by the fifteenth day of May in each year, to assess such shares of stock as of the first day of January next preceding, and to levy thereon the state taxes prescribed by law. The periods thus specified for the report of the corporation and the assessment by the Commission had expired in 1924, when chapter 225 of the Acts of Assembly of that year, amending section 162 of article 81 of the Code, became operative. But while the appellee filed its report with the Commission before the fifteenth day of March, 1924, as required by section 157, the Commission did not, as therein directed, assess the appellee’s stock by the fifteenth day of May, 1924, but 'deferred the assessment until the following August, when it made a valuation subject to the right of the appellee to apply within ten days to have it modified. A request by the appellee to the Commission for a conference on the subject was made within that time and was granted.

The conference was not held until December 5th, 1924, and the appellee then requested that its mortgages on real estate in Maryland be deducted from the basis of the assessment of its shares of stock. The final decision against the allowance of the exemption was rendered by the Commission on December 30th, 1924. Because the assessment, though directed by law to be made at a time anterior to the date when the Act of 1924 ³⁸³ became effective, was not actually made until a later period of the year, it is contended that the appellee should have the benefit, in the 1924 assessment, of the exemption for which the act provided. The question to be determined, however, depends upon a proper interpretation of the terms and intent of the act, in the light of the other provisions with which it, is combined in the revenue article of the Code, and our construction of the statute should not be influenced by the fortuitous fact that an assessment designed by the Code to be made by the fifteenth day of May annually was not made in 1924 until August or December.

In the enactment of the exemption statute, as ail amendment of section 162 of article 81 of the Code, the