Black v. State

— This tax dispute presents a question left over from the Seattle World’s Fair. Mitsui & Co., Ltd., leased or chartered the “Dominion Monarch” to a Washington corporation, the Dominion Monarch, Inc., for use as a floating hotel in Seattle during the World’s Fair in the summer of 1962. The cost of the lease was $425,000. The state tax commission assessed Mitsui & Co., Ltd., with a retail sales tax of $17,000 on the lease of the ship. The assessment was appealed to the Washington State Tax Commission, and that body upheld the assessment. Mitsui assigned all claims for a refund of the tax to the…