noting that sales tax is “in part a levy on the vendor for the privilege of selling at retail”
How later courts described this case
- noting that sales tax is “in part a levy on the vendor for the privilege of selling at retail”
- "There is no necessary inconsistency between imposing the legal incidence of a tax upon the vendor, yet recognizing a statutory right in the vendor to shift the tax to the purchaser"
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Cutter, J.
(concurring) The later part of the opinion of the court takes the position, with which I agree, that the Constitution of the United States and 12 U. S. C. § 548 *197 (1964) do not prevent the imposition of a nondiserimina-tory State use tax with respect to a situation or transaction in which a national bank has become the purchaser and user of tangible personal property. Similar considerations seem to me to permit the imposition of a nondiscriminatory State sales tax with respect to a transaction in which a national bank is the purchaser of tangible personal property. I concur in the result of the opinion of the court on this ground which seems to me to be implicit in what the opinion of the court says about the use tax. In my view, there is no occasion to decide whether the legal incidence of the Massachusetts sales tax is upon such a national bank as a retail purchaser or upon its vendor.