United States v. Erie Railway Co.

delivered the opinion of the court.

When this. case was argued, no special claim was made for a judgment based on the currency value of the pounds sterling at the time the taxes sued for ought to have been paid, and for that reason a judgment was ordered for the present value of pounds sterling in lawful money. We are now asked to rehear the case for the purpose of considering that question.

The company was liable for taxes of five per cent on the amounts of interest paid. As the payments were all made in pounds sterling, the computations must necessarily be on that basis. Sect. 9 of the act of July 13, 1866, c. 184, made it the duty of the company to return a list of the prescribed taxes to.the assessor. .In making up such lists the act required that it should be declared whether the amounts were stated

In Savings Bank v. United States, 19 Wall. 227 , 240, it was decided that a suit at law might be maintained for the recovery of a tax on interest paid, even though no list had been returned and no assessment made-; and in the opinion it was said: “ No other assessment than that made by the statute was necessary to determine the extent of the bank’s liability. An assessment is only determining the value of the thing taxed, and the amount of tax required of each individual. It may be made by the designated officers or by the law itself. In ’ the present case the statute required every savings bank to pay a tax of five per cent on all undistributed earnings made, or added during the year to their contingent funds. There-was no occasion or room for any other assessment. This was a charge of a certain sum upon the bank, and without more it made the bank a debtor.”

In the present case no list was returned by the company and no assessment made by the assessor. Consequently no list was ever furnished the collector, and the amount to be paid in currency was never officially ascertained. This suit is, therefore, for the debt which the company owes, to wit, five per cent of the pounds sterling it has paid as interest on its bonds. If the debt had been paid at the time it was due, the officers chargeable with the collection could have accepted nothing but legal-tender currency, and to an amount equivalent to the value of the coin which was owing. In other words, the debt was in the nature of an obligation to pay in coin, but which the government would not receive in anything but legal-tender currency of equal value with the coin. This is a suit for the recovery of that debt as a debt. If'there were now any difference in value between coin and currency, it would have been proper to render the judgment for the coin or its equivalent in

As upon this application we have had the benefit of a printed brief by the Solicitor-General on behalf of the United States, and upon full consideration are satisfied that the judgment as it stands is right, notwithstanding the. claim that is now made, the application for a rehearing is

Denied.