Collector v. Day, 11 Wall. (78 U.S.) 113 (1871), argued 3 Feb. 1871, decided 3 Apr. 1871 by vote of 8 to 1; Nelson for the Court, Bradley in dissent. Collector v. Day was one in a line of cases involving intergovernmental tax immunities, and, as such, traced its origins to the latter part of Chief Justice John Marshall's opinion in McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), which held that a state could not tax an instrumentality of the federal government. Following this reasoning, the Court had held in Dobbins v. Erie County (1842) that a state could not tax the income of a federal officer. Collector v. Day was the reciprocal of Dobbins, holding that the federal government could not tax the income of a state judge. Justice Samuel Nelson relied on the Tenth Amendment and on doctrines of dual sovereignty to hold that the state and federal governments were independent of each other and that the states retained all aspects of sovereignty not delegated to the federal government (see Dual Federalism). Consequently, he reasoned, the federal government could not tax essential instrumentalities of the states. The Day doctrine was weakened by the Court's decision in Helvering v. Gerhardt (1938) and finally explicitly overruled in Graves v. O'Keefe (1939).

William M. Wiecek

COLLECTOR V. DAY

COLLECTOR V. DAY, 11 Wallace 113 (1871). Between 1864 and 1867, Congress passed revenue acts taxing the income of "every person residing in the United States." Day, a probate judge in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, paid the tax under protest and sued to recover on grounds that it was inappropriate for the federal government to tax his judicial salary. By an 8 to 1 vote, the Supreme Court agreed with Day. The Court did not, as is sometimes claimed, invalidate the federal tax. An unintended result of Collector v. Day was a miasma of tax exemptions for state and federal employees. The Court repudiated the principle of intergovernmental exemption in the case of Graves v. New York (1939).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Fairman, Charles. Reconstruction and Reunion, 1864–88. New York: Macmillan, 1971.

Alvin F.Harlow

R. VolneyRiser

See alsoTaxation .