Arkansas-Louisiana Pipe Line Co. v. Coverdale

(Dissenting) .

The primary purpose of the statute appears to have been to impose a license tax upon the production of power. It thus imposed not a property, but an -excise or privilege, tax. Union Sulphur Co. v. Reid (D.C.) 17 F.Supp. 27, this day decided. State ex rel. Porterie v. Hunt, 182 La. 1073, 162 So. 777, 103 A.L.R. 9; Bromley v. McCaughn, 280 U.S. 124, 50 S.Ct. 46, 74 L.Ed. 226.

The majority concludes that, because the tax is a privilege, and not a property, tax, and falls on the generation by complainant of power, used in part to gather gas into and in part to transport it through…