Miller & Lux Inc. v. Richardson

This is an action to recover taxes paid under protest by the plaintiff corporation upon alleged illegal and arbitrary assessments of its “franchise” for the years 1911 to 1915, inclusive, by the state board of equalization. The plaintiff is a foreign corporation and possesses no special franchise or privilege within the state which the state 'board of equalization was attempting to assess. The only franchise in the strict sense of that word which would be covered by the assessments in question is the privilege of the plaintiff to do business as a corporation within the state. The assessments were made upon the basis of valuing thereby the so-called “corporate excess”; that is, the difference between ¡ the value of its outstanding stocks and bonds as determined , by market quotations, the earnings of the company, or otherwise, and the value of its tangible or physical properties. The theory is that the value of the company’s outstanding stocks and bonds represents the value of its total assets, so that the difference between this total and the value of the company’s physical properties represents the value of the company’s intangible assets, and an assessment of the corporate…