The taxation of corporations in New York Author:Henry Montefiore Powell Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER VI Manner Of Assessing Corporations ; Deduction or Debts. In the Tax Law of 1896 there was no specific provision which permitted the deduction of the ... more »debts of a corporation in the assessment of its capital stock. Section 21 of the Tax Law of 1896 providing for the manner in making up the assessment- roll required that there should be placed "in the fourth column the full value of all the taxable personal property owned by each person respectively, after deducting the just debts owing by him." In construing this section of the law, it was held that since under section 5 of the Statutory Construction Law the term "person" included a corporation and a joint stock association, a corporation may, therefore, deduct its debts from the value of the property. People ex rel. Cornell Steamboat Co. v. Dederick, 161 1ST. Y. 196 (1900) ; see also People ex rel. Second Ave. R. R. Co. v. Barker, 141 N. Y. 196 (1894). Section 21 of the Tax Law as amended by Chapter 315 of the Laws of 1911 provides for the preparation of an assessment- roll, and the arrangement of columns therein, and as far as it relates to the method of assessing corporations it is as follows: "1. In the first column, the names of all persons and corporations in the tax district, taxable on personal property. "2. In the second column, the full value of all the taxable personal property owned by each person respectively after deducting the just debts owing by him. "4. In the fourth column, the full value of the capital stock of each corporation assessed pursuant to the provisions of section twelve of this chapter. "5. In the fifth column, the full value of all the taxable personal property owned by each person respectively after deducting the just debts owing by him when such person resides in an incorpor...« less