Tangible Personalty
As long as tangible personal property has a situs within its borders, a State validly may tax the same, whether directly through an ad valorem tax or indirectly through death taxes, irrespective of the residence of the owner.[491] By the same token, if tangible personal property makes only occasional incursions into other States, its permanent situs remains in the State of origin, and is taxable only by the latter.[492] The ancient maxim, mobilia sequuntur personam, which had its origin when personal property consisted in the main of articles appertaining to the person of the owner, yielded in modern times to the "law of the place where the property is kept and used." In recent years, the tendency has been to treat tangible personal property as "having a situs of its own for the purpose of taxation, and correlatively to * * * exempt [it] at the domicile of its owner."[493]The benefit-protection theory of taxation, upon which the Court has in fact relied to sustain taxation exclusively by the situs State, logically would seem to permit taxation by the domiciliary State as well as by the nondomiciliary State in which the tangibles are situate, especially when the former levies the tax on the owner in terms of the value of the tangibles. Thus far, however, the Court has taken the position that when the tangibles have a situs elsewhere, the domiciliary State can neither control such property nor extend to it or to its owner such measure of protection as would be adequate to meet the jurisdictional requirements of due process.
Intangible Personalty
General.—To determine whether a State, or States, may tax intangible personal property, the Court has applied the fiction, mobilia sequuntur personam and has also recognized that such property may acquire, for tax purposes, a business or commercial situs where permanently located; but it has never clearly disposed of the issue as to whether multiple personal property taxation of intangibles is consistent with due process. In the case of corporate stock, however, the Court has obliquely acknowledged that the owner thereof may be taxed at his own domicile, at the commercial situs of the issuing corporation, and at the latter's domicile; but, as of the present date, constitutional lawyers are speculating whether the Court would sustain a tax by all three jurisdictions, or by only two of them, and, if the latter, which two, the State of the commercial situs and of the issuing corporation's domicile, or the State of the owner's domicile and that of the commercial situs.[494]
Taxes on Intangibles Sustained.—Thus far, the Court has sustained the following personal property taxes on intangibles:
(1) A debt held by a resident against a nonresidence, evidenced by a bond of the debtor and secured by a mortgage on real estate in the State of the debtor's residence.[495]
(2) A mortgage owned and kept outside the State by a nonresident but on land within the State.[496]
(3) Investments, in the form of loans to residents, made by a resident agent of a nonresident creditor, are taxable to the nonresident creditor.[497]
(4) Deposits of a resident in a bank in another State, where he carries on a business and from which these deposits are derived, but belonging absolutely to him and not used in the business, are subject to a personal property tax in the city of his residence, whether or not they are subject to tax in the State where the business is carried on. The tax is imposed for the general advantage of living within the jurisdiction [benefit-protection theory], and may be measured by reference to the riches of the person taxed.[498]
(5) Membership owned by a nonresident in a domestic exchange, known as a chamber of commerce.[499]