MR. JUSTICE STONE delivered the opinion of the Court.
Respondent, the owner in fee of Texas oil lands, executed oil and gas leases of the lands for three years and as long thereafter as oil or gas should be produced from them by the lessee, in return for bonus payments aggregating $57,000 in cash, and stipulated royalties, measured by the production of oil and gas by the lessee. In making his income tax returns under the Revenue Act of 1924 for the years 1924 and 1925, respondent reported the cash payments as gain from a sale of capital assets, taxable under the applicable section of the statute at a lower rate than other income. The Commissioner treated the payments
The Revenue Act of 1924, c. 234, 43 Stat. 262, like that of 1921, c. 136, 42 Stat. 232, taxed certain income derived from capital gains at a lower rate than other income. By § 208 (a) (1) "The term `capital gain' means taxable gain from the sale or exchange of capital assets consummated after December 31, 1921." By § 208 (a) (8) "capital assets" means property held by the taxpayer for more than two years but does not include property "which would properly be included in the inventory of the taxpayer if on hand at the close of the taxable year, or property held by the taxpayer primarily for sale in the course of his trade or business." Related provisions of the section define "capital loss" and "capital deductions" which, in some circumstances, are allowed as deductions from capital gain in order to arrive at the net gain taxed at the lower rate. The only question presented here is whether the bonus payments to the respondent, after allowed deductions, if any, are "gain from the sale or exchange of capital assets" within the meaning of the taxing act.
It is an incident of every oil and gas lease, where production operations are carried on by the lessee, that the ownership of the oil and gas passes from the lessor to the lessee at some time and the lessor is compensated by the payments made by the lessee for the rights and privileges which he acquires under the lease. But notwithstanding this incidental transfer of ownership, it is evident that the taxation of the receipts of the lessor as income does not ordinarily produce the kind of hardship aimed at by the capital gains provision of the taxing act. Oil and gas may or may not be present in the leased premises, and may or may not be found by the lessee. If found, their abstraction from the soil is a time-consuming operation and the payments made by the lessee to the lessor do not normally become payable as the result of a single transaction within the taxable year, as in the case of a sale of property. The payment of an initial bonus alters the character of the transaction no more than an unusually large rental for the first year alters the character of any other lease, and the taxation of the one as ordinary income does not act as a deterrent upon conversion of capital assets, any more than the taxation of the other.
Long before the enactment of the capital gains provision in the 1921 Revenue Act, this Court had to determine whether a mining lease was to be regarded as a sale. In interpreting the Corporation Tax Law of 1909, it had occasion to consider the nature of the proceeds derived by the owner of mineral land from his own mining operations or from payments made to him by the lessee under a mining lease. That Act imposed an excise tax on corporations, measured by their income. Unlike the later revenue acts, it made no provision for a depletion allowance to be deducted from the proceeds of mining in order to arrive at the statutory income. It was argued that since the net result of the mining operation is a conversion of capital investment as upon a sale, the money received by the corporate owner or lessor, being its capital in a changed form, could not rightly be deemed to be income. But that argument was rejected, both with respect to the proceeds of mining operations carried on by the corporate owner on its land, Stratton's Independence v.
Although these cases arose under the Act of 1909, before the enactment of the capital gains provision in the 1921 Act, they established, for purposes of defining "income" in a tax measured by it, that payments by lessees to lessors under mining leases were not a conversion of capital, as upon a sale of capital assets, but were income to the lessor, like payments of rent. And before the 1921 Act this Court had indicated (see Eisner v. Macomber, 252 U.S. 189, 207), what it later held, that "income," as used in the revenue acts taxing income, adopted since the Sixteenth Amendment, has the same meaning that it had in the Act of 1909. Merchants Loan & Trust Co. v. Smietanka, 255 U.S. 509, 519; see Southern Pacific Co. v. Lowe, 247 U.S. 330, 335.
Congress legislated in the light of this history, cf. United States v. Merriam, 263 U.S. 179, 187; and, in the absence of explicit language indicating a different purpose, it cannot be taken to have intended that an oil and gas lease under the capital gains provision, any more than a mineral lease under the earlier acts, should be treated like an ordinary sale of land or chattels, resulting in a conversion of capital assets. Such a construction would have disregarded legislative and judicial history of persuasive force; it would have adopted a distorted, rather than the common meaning of the term "sale," see Old Colony R. Co. v. Commissioner, 284 U.S. 552, 561, and would have tended to defeat rather than further the purpose of the Act.
In Group No. 1 Oil Corp. v. Bass, 283 U.S. 279, this Court recognized that oil and gas leases have been characterized, in the decisions of the Texas courts, as present sales of the oil and gas in place, and we applied the rule of those decisions that ownership of the oil and gas passes from lessor to lessee on execution of the lease. There the question was not one of the interpretation of a federal statute, but of the power of the federal government to levy a tax upon the income of a lessee of state lands, derived from the sale of oil and gas abstracted by him from the land. It was objected that the tax was not within the power of the federal government because imposed on income derived from an instrumentality of the state. If the oil and gas had ceased to be property of the state before its removal by the lessee, it had, under the decisions of this Court, ceased to be an instrumentality of the state, and the income derived from it was within the taxing power of the national government. Whether the title
Here we are concerned only with the meaning and application of a statute enacted by Congress, in the exercise of its plenary power under the Constitution, to tax income. The exertion of that power is not subject to state control. It is the will of Congress which controls, and the expression of its will in legislation, in the absence of language evidencing a different purpose, is to be interpreted so as to give a uniform application to a nationwide scheme of taxation. See Weiss v. Weiner, 279 U.S. 333, 337; Burk-Waggoner Oil Assn. v. Hopkins, 269 U.S. 110; United States v. Childs, 266 U.S. 304, 309. State law may control only when the federal taxing act, by express language or necessary implication, makes its own operation dependent upon state law. See Crooks v. Harrelson, 282 U.S. 55; Poe v. Seaborn, 282 U.S. 101; United States v. Loan & Building Co., 278 U.S. 55; Tyler v. United States, 281 U.S. 497; see Von Baumbach v. Sargent Land Co., supra, 519.
But § 208 neither says nor implies that the determination of "gain from the sale or exchange of capital assets" is to be controlled by state law. For the purpose of applying this section to the particular payments now under consideration, the Act of Congress has its own criteria, irrespective of any particular characterization of the payments in the local law. See Weiss v. Weiner, supra, 337. The state law creates legal interests but the federal statute determines when and how they shall be taxed. We examine the Texas law only for the purpose of ascertaining whether the leases conform to the standard which the taxing statute prescribes for giving the favored treatment to capital gains. Thus tested we find in the
Title to the oil and gas likewise passes from the land owner when he conducts mining operations on his own land. But, as was pointed out in Stratton's Independence v. Howbert, since that is only an incident to the use of his land for oil production, the operation, considered in its entirety, cannot be viewed as a sale or a conversion of capital assets. Like considerations govern here.
The court below thought that the bonus payments, as distinguished from the royalties, should be treated as capital gain, apparently because it assumed that the statute authorizes a depletion allowance upon the royalties alone. See Ferguson v. Commissioner, 45 F.2d 573, 577. But bonus payments to the lessor have been deemed to be subject to depletion allowances under § 214a (9), Revenue Act of 1924, by Art. 216, Treasury Regulations 65, as well as under earlier acts. § 214 a (10), Revenue Act of 1921, Art. 215, Treasury Regulations 62. Cf. Murohy Oil Co. v. Burnet, 55 F.2d 17. The distinction, so far as we are advised, has not been taken in any other case. See Alexander v. King, supra; Ferguson v. Commissioner, 59 F.2d 891; Appeal of Nelson Land & Oil Co., 3 B.T.A.
Reversed.
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