Fidelity Trust Co. v. McCaughn

DICKINSON, District Judge.

This rale has been taken to raise the question of the lawfulness of a tax exaction, and to that question we go directly. Distinctions are sometimes mere figments of the brain, hut they often serve a useful purpose. One is that between a tax levied upon property and a tax measured by that same property. The thought of Congress was to measure the tax in question by the value of the estate of a decedent which passed at Ms death to others. This was found to work an inequality. What is property and what is a part of the estate of a decedent is determined by the law-making…