PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. ■ 363 



State of Pennsylvania; respecting which condition of affairs the 

 court used the following language: 



" It is apparent, if the State of Pennsylvania is at liberty to tax 

 these bonds, that to the extent of this Maryland portion of the road 

 she is taxing property and interest beyond her jurisdiction. Again, 

 if Pennsylvania can tax these bonds, upon the same principle Mary- 

 land can tax them. This is too apparent to require argument. The 

 consequence, if permitted, would be double taxation of the bond- 

 holder, and its effect is readily seen. Thus a tax of three mills per 

 dollar of the principal, at an interest of six per centum, payable 

 semiannually, is ten per centum per annum of the interest; a tax, 

 therefore, by each State, at this rate, amounts to an annual reduc- 

 tion from the coupons of twenty per centum; and if this consolida- 

 tion of the line of the road had extended into New York or Ohio, 

 or into both, the deduction would have been thirty or forty. If 

 Pennsylvania must tax bonds of this description, she must confine it 

 to bonds issued exclusively by her own corporations. Our conclusion 

 is, that to permit the deduction of the tax from the coupons in ques- 

 tion would be giving effect to the acts of the Pennsylvania Legisla- 

 ture upon property and interests lying beyond her jurisdiction." 



Again, the national (United States) bank act acknowledges, and 

 the courts of the United States have so held, that a bank has a situs 

 and its shares a situs where the bank is located, and not where the 

 stockholders reside. The national bank act, therefore, discards the 

 usual State principle of taxation, that personal property follows the 

 owner. 



A debt incurred for stock in a corporation has recently (1897) 

 been held by the Appellate Supreme Court of New York as non- 

 taxable, because the assets represented by the stocks are assessed and 

 taxed. 



But are credits, in any or all of the various forms in which they 

 are exemplified, property ? This question brings us face to face with 

 another of those curious anomalies of opinion and practice that char- 

 acterize this whole subject of taxation. 



In most of the States of the Federal Union credits are generally 

 regarded as property, and are made the subject of taxation at the 

 residence or domicile of their owner, and are held to embrace all 

 debts due from solvent debtors, whether on account, contract, note, 

 bond, or mortgage, and stocks in moneyed corporations, irrespective 

 of the place where such securities may be at the time the assessment 

 shall be made. In States, however, like New York, which reject 

 the assumption that the situs of movable, visible, personal property 

 for taxation follows the owner irrespective of its actual location, and 

 accept the decision of its own courts, that the situs of such property 



