American Can Co. v. McCanless

The Can Company is a foreign manufacturing corporation which, qualified in 1937 to do business in Tennessee. The Excise Tax Law, Chapters 99 and 176 of the Public Acts of 1937, Code, Section 1316', lays a tax of three and three-fourths percent on the net earnings of such corporations for “their next preceding fiscal or calendar year, from business done within the State ’ ’; and requires such corporations, to which class the Can Company belongs, to pay this tax annually “to the Commissioner of Finance & Taxation.”

It appears that the Can Company reported for the years 1937 to 1942, inclusive,…