Professional Documents
Culture Documents
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* EN BANC.
655
mitted that for all its plenitude, the power to tax is not
unconfined. There are restrictions. The Constitution sets forth
such limits. Adversely affecting as it does property rights, both
the due process and equal protection clauses may properly be
invoked, as petitioner does, to invalidate in appropriate cases a
revenue measure. If it were otherwise, there would be truth to the
1803 dictum of Chief Justice Marshall that “the power to tax
involves the power to destroy.” In a separate opinion in Graves v.
New York, Justice Frankfurter, after referring to it as an
“unfortunate remark,” characterized it as “a flourish of rhetoric
[attributable to] the intellectual fashion of the times [allowing] a
free use of absolutes.” This is merely to emphasize that it is not
and there cannot be such a constitutional mandate. Justice
Frankfurter could rightfully conclude: “The web of unreality spun
from Marshall’s famous dictum was brushed away by one stroke
of Mr. Justice Holmes’s pen: ‘The power to tax is not the power to
destroy while this Court sits.’ ” So it is in the Philippines.
Same; Same; A bare allegation that Batas 135, which sets
different income tax schedules for fixed income earners and
business or professional income earners, is arbitrary does not
suffice to invalidate said tax statute.—The difficulty confronting
petitioner is thus apparent. He alleges arbitrariness. A mere
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656
657
FERNANDO, C.J.:
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1 Petitioner must have realized that a suit for declaratory relief must be
filed with Regional Trial Courts.
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Par. (b) reads: “(b) On taxable net income.—A tax is hereby imposed upon
the taxable net income as determined in Section 29 (a) received
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during each taxable year from all sources by every individual, whether
a citizen of the Philippines, or an alien residing in the Philippines
determined in accordance with the following schedule:
660
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17 Ibid, 490.
18 Cf. Ermita-Malate Hotel and Motel Operators Association v. Hon.
City Mayor, 127 Phil. 306, 315 (1967); U.S. v. Salaveria, 39 Phil. 102, 111
(1918) and Eboña v. Daet, 85 Phil. 369 (1950). Likewise referred to is
O’Gorman and Young v. Hartford Fire Insurance Co., 282 US 251, 328
(1931).
662
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663
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664
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665
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Petition dismissed.
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