MINNESOTA TAX AND LAWS TAX DECISIONS CHAPTER I. NATURE AND EXTENT OF TAXING POWERS IN GENERAL, CONSTITUTIONALITY, ETC. I. General taxing Powers of State and Municipalities. § 1. Power of taxation - The power of the legislature unrestrained by constitutional limitations, is absolute in the imposition and apportionment of taxes. Section 1, art. 9, of the Constitution, lays down a general rule for the levying of all taxes and requires that equality shall be aimed at in every law imposing a tax. Sanborn v. Commissioners of Rice County, 9 Minn. 273 (258). § 2. What constitutes a tax Assessments of expenses for grading streets is an exercise of the taxing power. Stinson v. Smith, 8 Minn. 366 (326). § 3. General taxing powers - The power to tax is not a statutory right, but an incident of sovereignty. The mode of exercising the power, however, is prescribed by the legislature, and is to be followed as the due course of law by which the property of the citizen is to be disposed of. Webb v. Bidwell, 15 Minn. 479 (394). § 4. Computation of tax-The state has a right to impose a tax upon the property within its borders, regardless of the uses to which it is devoted by its owners, and as a method of determining what is a fair and equitable property tax it may permit the tax to be computed on the basis of a fixed percentage of the earnings of the property. State v. N. W. Telephone Exch. Co., 107 Minn. 390 (120 N. W. 534). § 5. Legislature powers to tax-The legislature may ratify and make valid a tax levied without authority. Wilson v. Buckman, 13 Minn. 441 (404). § 6. Municipal corporations-power to tax-The state, by virtue of its sovereignty, has an inherent power to tax, limited only by the restrictions imposed by the Constitution; but munici § 1. Article 9, Constitution of Minnesota Power of taxation - The power of taxation shall never be surrendered, suspended or contracted away. Taxes shall be uniform upon the same class of subjects, and shall be levied and collected for public purposes, but public burying grounds, public school houses, public hospitals, academies, colleges, universities, and all seminaries of learning, all churches, church property, and houses of worship, institutions of purely public charity, and public property used exclusively for any public purpose, shall be exempt from taxation, and there may be exempted from taxation personal property not exceeding in value, $200, for each household, individual or head of a family, as the legislature may determine: Provided, that the legislature may authorize municipal corporations to levy and collect assessments for local improvements upon property benefited thereby without regard to a cash valuation, and provided further, that nothing herein contained shall be construed to affect, modify or repeal any existing law providing for the taxation of the gross earnings of railroads. |