Commonwealth v. Cover
Commonwealth v. Cover
Opinion of the Court
The appellants manufacture leather in the states of Virginia and West Virginia, which is shipped to their place of business in the city of Philadelphia for sale to their customers. They do not question their liability as wholesale dealers to pay a mercantile tax on the uncut sides which they sell, but, as to those which they cut up at their business to satisfy the requirements of their customers, they claim to be manufacturers.
What the appellants sell at their place of business here is leather. The sides, when uncut, are admitted to be leather, manufactured at distant tanneries and shipped here to be sold by the appellants as leather. By no process of reasoning can the mere cutting up of the sides into pieces, to suit the requirements of the customers of the dealers, transform them into anything else than what they were before. The customers of the appellants want leather, and whether they get cut or uncut sides, they get nothing but leather, unmanufactured into anything else from the time it left the tannery. The dealers in it cut it up into convenient pieces to facilitate its sale to their customers, who buy it, not as something having been manufac
Judgment affirmed.
Reference
- Cited By
- 2 cases
- Status
- Published
- Syllabus
- Taxation — Mercantile tax — Manufacturers—Tanners—Exemption. Where a tanner concedes that he manufactures leather in Virginia, and sells it in a store in Pennsylvania, the commonwealth has a prima facie right to the mercantile tax upon the whole volume of the business, and the burden of showing that any portion of the sales is exempt, rests upon the tanner. The fact that the leather is cut in the store into various sizes and pieces, but not manufactured into any complete article, does not exempt from taxation the leather thus treated, on the ground that it was manufactured into articles for sale.