Contradiction Between the Two Tax Court Scenarios

Barnes was relieved from the tax dilemma by the court in the Barnes Hospital v. Collector of Revenue scenario (Ahmad, Brosio & Pöschl, 2014). Instead, the court called for further assessment. All properties which were intended for both charitable and corporate purposes were excepted by Missouri’s constitution from taxations. However, there were contradictions about the court interpretation of the term ‘property’ when being equated to the whole building. The issue was whether the term ‘property’ referred to the entire building including its separate portions or involved building and its portions separately. The court interpreted ‘property’ as a structure including all the portion because they are considered a unit during tax calculations (Espinosa & Martell, 2015).

In the second case of Greater Anchorage V. Sisters of Charity, the court reversed the decision with the argument that according to the law, attorney’s fees could not be equated with the costs with in-house counsel (Rantz, Flesner, Franklin, Galambos, Pudlowski, Pritchett & Lueckenotte, 2015). The rules concerning attorney fees are more to paying enterprise’s employees who are permanent more than to cover lawsuit associated costs. According to the law, attorney fees should be given to the qualified party in terms of the rule; however, it lacks respective scope as per private or public entities.  The two decisions are never the less unfair as they allocate two different court rulings on the same scenario (Blöchliger, 2015).

The Most Persuasive Interpretation of the Two

The most persuasive tax law interpretation between the two is the Barnes hospital. This is because it treats the whole building and its portions as the property (Fish, 2015). All encompasses of a building should be treated as a unit as they are treated as such during tax calculations.

Besides, the Barnes case is more persuasive than Borough due to the fact that it highlights the full findings of the Court’s trial (McCluskey, 2018). Barnes case further illustrates the subsequent conclusion of the court decisions. A property should be liable to taxation according to CCH tax law Editors if its evaluation is based on ‘exempt’ listing of the state constitution (Janoušková & Sobotovičová, 2016).

Barnes Hospital Decision on Ownership and Leasing of the Property

The Barnes decision would have different if the property were owned by a profit making company and leased to the same hospital. This is because a for-profit company would have owned the which is liable to paying taxes (Meyers, 2017). Thus, the property would be subject to laws and any decision concerning Barnes hospital would have been in strict consideration of taxation (Mumford, 2017).

The law states that business transactions by a non-profit organization are exempted from paying tax because there exist no other facilities for a business transaction in the building (Rantz, Flesner, Franklin, Galambos, Pudlowski, Pritchett & Lueckenotte, 2015). The court would consider the two enterprises as different property from each other. Therefore, Barnes hospital shall be liable to taxation since its operations lack adequate tax exemption rationale (Presbitero, Sacchi & Zazzaro, 2014).

Would Visitors, Families, Patients, and Employees Paying Hourly Parking Fees Exempted from Missouri and Alaska

The parking garage is used in serving the staff and visitors of the hospital. Therefore, the use of whether having financial benefits or not should not deem the hospital liable to taxation (Slack & Bird, 2014). The parking fee is used as a maintenance fee by the institution and not in earning the hospital facility profits.

The issue would not have to affect Missouri as the parking would have been considered as part of the property hence seen as a unit (Virkar, 2014). On the other side, the parking garage would have a significant impact on the Alaska case. This is because the court sees each in each section of property by themselves; hence, they would have considered the parking garage as an individual enterprise.

If the garage had been used by local business and not related to the hospital, Alaska would treat the business as another property and liable to taxation (Showalter, 2017). This is because the court would treat any portions of enterprises in the same building as individual property hence liable to tax (Virkar, 2016). On the other side, Missouri would have treated the parking garage as a portion of the property (hospital) thus not subject to taxation.

References

Ahmad, E., Brosio, G., & Pöschl, C. (2014). Local Property Taxation and Benefits in Developing Countries–Overcoming political resistance. Handbook of Multilevel Finance.

Blöchliger, H. (2015). Reforming the Tax on Immovable Property.

Espinosa, S., & Martell, C. (2015). Building Bond Repayment Capacity in Developing Countries: A Study on Property Tax Collections and Debt Affordability in Mexico. International Journal of Public Administration, 38(3), 227-236.

Fish, P. (2015). Practical aspects of mobilizing property tax: experience in Sierra Leone and Malawi. Commonwealth Journal of Local Governance, 242-262.

Janoušková, J., & Sobotovičová, Š. (2016). Immovable property tax in the Czech Republic as an instrument of fiscal decentralization. Technological and Economic Development of Economy, 22(6), 767-782.

McCluskey, W. (Ed.). (2018). Property tax: An international comparative review. Routledge.

Meyers, M. A. (2017). Art, Education, and African-American Culture: Albert Barnes and the Science of Philanthropy. Routledge.

Mumford, A. (2017). Taxing culture: towards a theory of tax collection law. Routledge.

Presbitero, A. F., Sacchi, A., & Zazzaro, A. (2014). Property tax and fiscal discipline in OECD countries. Economics Letters, 124(3), 428-433.

Rantz, M. J., Flesner, M. K., Franklin, J., Galambos, C., Pudlowski, J., Pritchett, A., … & Lueckenotte, A. (2015). Better care, better quality: reducing avoidable hospitalizations of nursing home residents. Journal of nursing care quality, 30(4), 290-297.

Showalter, J. S. (2017). Decisions to Forego Medical Treatment: The Preferred Medical, Ethical, and Legal Approach. The Catholic Lawyer, 29(3), 5.

 Slack, E., & Bird, R. M. (2014). The political economy of property tax reform.

Virkar, S. (2014). What’s in a Game?: The Politics of Shaping Property Tax Administration in Bangalore City, India. In Gamification for Human Factors Integration: Social, Education, and Psychological Issues (pp. 31-51). IGI Global.

Virkar, S. V. (2016). The politics of implementing e-government for development: the ecology of games shaping property tax administration in Bangalore city, India (Doctoral dissertation, University of Oxford).