XPost: sci.geo.petroleum, ca.politics, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh   
   XPost: talk.politics.guns, sac.politics   
   From: yourdime@outlook.com   
      
   Richmond is interfering with interstate commerce by exposing Chevron   
   to the possibility of being taxed more than once by other cities or states   
   for the same business activity.”   
      
   —The San Francisco Chronicle, summarizing the court’s decision   
      
   Like many California municipalities, the Bay Area city of   
   Richmond has been struggling to balance its books in   
   recent years. But one “tax solution” that Richmond officials   
   came up with posed a dangerous, unconstitutional   
   precedent.   
      
   Richmond voters had approved Measure T, which converted the local business   
   license tax from a traditional   
   per-employee assessment into a tax on the value of the   
   raw materials processed by a business. That new tax would   
   have looked to the value of crude oil processed at Chevron’s   
   Richmond refinery, skyrocketing Chevron’s local tax liability   
   from $60,000 to $20 million per year, in a single jump.   
      
   But the “unequivocal evidence” (in the words of the   
   reviewing judge) that Chevron had been deliberately   
   targeted through this new tax was not sufficient grounds to   
   set it aside. Instead, Pillsbury proved that the tax violated   
   both federal and state law, in two different respects.   
      
   First, the scheme ran afoul of the Commerce Clause of the   
   U.S. Constitution, Pillsbury argued, by failing to “fairly   
   apportion” the tax so that there would not be multiple   
   taxation of the same business activity if every jurisdiction   
   adopted the same scheme. Here, the scheme carried a   
   significant risk of multiple taxation.   
      
   Second, because the tax was based on the value of the   
   product being used—crude oil in Chevron’s case—it was a   
   type of “use tax” that California lawmakers had reserved   
   for the state itself, and was therefore off-limits to local   
   municipalities like Richmond.   
      
   The judge agreed with Chevron on both arguments,   
   invalidating the tax and ordering Richmond to refund the   
   company approximately $20 million in overpaid taxes. With   
   the early and definitive defeat of this tax scheme, Chevron   
   and Pillsbury also put California municipalities on notice that   
   similar experiments in targeted taxation were equally   
   unlikely to succeed.   
      
   https://www.pillsburylaw.com/images/content/3/4/v2/3465/Litigation-   
   TaxControversy-Chevron-CS.pdf   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)