- 7 - stated: Legislatures have especially broad latitude in creating classifications and distinctions in tax statutes. More than forty years ago we addressed these comments to an equal protection challenge to tax legislation: “The broad discretion as to classification possessed by a legislature in the field of taxation has long been recognized. * * * The passage of time has only served to underscore the wisdom of that recognition of the large area of discretion which is needed by a legislature in formulating sound tax policies. * * * Since the members of a legislature necessarily enjoy a familiarity with local conditions which this Court cannot have, the presumption of constitutionality can be overcome only by the most explicit demonstration that a classification is a hostile and oppressive discrimination against particular persons and classes. The burden is on the one attacking the legislative arrangement to negative every conceivable basis which might support it.” Madden v. Kentucky, 309 U.S. 83, 87-88 (1940); (footnotes omitted). Thus, Congress has broad authority to grant one class of taxpayers deductions not available to another, as well as to recognize differences between various kinds of business. See Brushaber v. Union Pac. R.R., supra at 24-25, and the provisions held constitutional therein (for example, upholding the constitutionality of the corporate income tax, and observing that “the due process clause of the 5th Amendment * * * [does not limit a tax imposed on a class of taxpayers unless it] was so wanting in basis for classification as to produce such a gross and patent inequality as to inevitably lead to the same conclusion [i.e., an arbitrary confiscation of property].”); High Plains Agric. Credit Corp. v. Commissioner, 63 T.C. 118, 127Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Next
Last modified: May 25, 2011