Adhering to this precedent, the Court has held that a tax upon the net income of a nonresident from business carried on by him in the State is not a burden on interstate commerce merely because the products of the business are shipped out of the State;[717] also that a tax which is levied upon the proportion of the net profits of a foreign corporation earned by operations conducted within the taxing State is valid, if the method of allocation employed be not arbitrary or unreasonable.[718] Where, however, the method of allocating the net income of a foreign corporation attributed to the State an amount of income out of all proportion to the business there transacted by the corporation, it was held void.[719]
Also, a State may impose a tax upon the net income of property, as distinguished from the net income of him who owns or operates it, although the property is used in interstate commerce;[720] also a "franchise tax" measured by the net income justly attributable to business done by corporations within the State, although part of the income so attributable comes from interstate and foreign commerce;[721] also a tax on corporate net earnings derived from business done wholly within the State may be applied to the income of a foreign pipeline corporation which is commercially domiciled there and which pipes natural gas into that State for delivery to, and sale by, a local distributing corporation to local consumers.[722] Indeed it was asserted that even if the taxpayer's business were wholly interstate commerce, such a nondiscriminatory tax upon its net income "is not prohibited by the commerce clause," there being no showing that the income was not on net earnings partly attributable to the taxing State;[723] but a more recent holding appears to contradict this position.[724]
MISCELLANEOUS TAXES AFFECTING INTERSTATE COMMERCE
In Gloucester Ferry Company _v._ Pennsylvania,[725] decided in 1885, the Court held inapplicable to a New Jersey corporation which was engaged solely in transporting passengers across the Delaware River and entered Pennsylvania only to discharge and receive passengers and freight, a statute which taxed the capital stock of all corporations doing business within the State. Such transactions, the Court held, were interstate commerce; nor were the company's vessels subject to taxation by Pennsylvania, their taxing _situs_ being in the company's home State. The only property held by the company in Pennsylvania was the lease there of a wharf which could be taxed by the State according to its appraised value; and the State could also levy reasonable charges by way of tolls for the use of such facilities as it might itself furnish for the carrying on of commerce. This ruling rested on two earlier ones. In 1855, the Court had held that vessels registered in New York, owned by a New York corporation, and plying between New York City and San Francisco had the former city for their home port, and were not taxable by California where they remained no longer than necessary to discharge passengers and freight;[726] and in 1877 it had sustained Keokuk, Iowa in charging tolls for the use by vessels plying the Mississippi of wharves owned by the municipality, said tolls being reasonable and not discriminatory as between interstate and intrastate commerce.[727] Today it is still the general rule as to vessels plying between ports of different States and engaged in the coastwise trade, that the domicile of the owner is deemed to be the _situs_ of the vessel for purposes of taxation,[728] unless the vessel has acquired actual _situs_ in another State, by continuous employment there, in which event it may be taxed there.[729] Recently, however, this long standing rule has been amended by the addition to it of the apportionment rule as developed in the Pullman case. This occurred in Ott _v._ Mississippi Barge Line Co.,[730] decided in 1949, in which the Court sustained Louisiana in levying an _ad valorem_ tax on vessels owned by an interstate carrier and used within the State, the assessment for the tax being based on the ratio between the number of miles of the carrier's lines within the State and its total mileage.