second class, the statute specifically makes the liability for taxation depend, not upon the mere vesting in a technical sense of title to the gift, but upon the actual possession or enjoyment thereof. By any fair construction the limitation as to possession or enjoyment expressed as to one class must be applied to the other, unless it be found that the statute, whilst treating the two as one and the same for the purpose of the imposition of the death duty, has yet subjected them.

the clear value of such beneficial interest, or where no administration upon such property or personal estate shall have been granted or allowed under existing laws, the collector or deputy collector shall make out such lists and valuation as in other cases of neglect or refusal, and shall assess the duty thereon; and the collector shall commence appropriate proceedings before any court of the United States, in the name of the United States, against such person or persons as may have the actual or constructive custody or possession of such property or personal estate, or any part thereof, and shall subject such property or personal estate, or any portion of the same, to be sold upon the judgment or decree of such court, and from the proceeds of such sale the amount of such tax or duty, together with all costs and expenses of every description to be allowed by such court, shall be first paid, and the balance, if any, deposited according to the order of such court, to be paid under its direction to such person or persons as shall establish title to the same. The deed or deeds, or any proper conveyance of such property or personal estate, or any portion thereof, so sold under such judgment or decree, executed by the officer lawfully charged with carrying the same into effect, shall vest in the purchaser thereof all the title of the delinquent to the property or personal estate sold under and by virtue of such judgment or decree, and shall release every other portion of such property or personal estate from the lien or charge thereon created by this act. And every person or persons who shall have in his possession, charge, or custody any record, file, or paper containing, or supposed to contain, any information concerning such property or personal estate, as aforesaid, passing from any person who may die, as aforesaid, shall exhibit the same at the request of the collector or deputy collector of the district, and to any law officer of the United States, in the performance of his duty under this act, his deputy or agent, who may desire to examine the same. And if any such person, having in his possession, charge, or custody any such records, files, or papers, shall refuse or neglect to exhibit the same on request, as aforesaid, he shall forfeit and pay the sum of five hundred dollars: Provided, That in all legal controversies where such deed or title shall be the subject of judicial investigation, the recital in said deed shall be prima facie evidence of its truth, and that the requirements of the laws had been complied with by the officers of the Government.

to different rules. A consideration of the subsequent provisions of the section leaves no room for such a contention, since immediately following the designation of the two classes there are five distinct paragraphs, subjecting the passing of the property taxed in both classes to a different rate of tax, dependent upon the degree of relationship of the beneficiary to the decedent, and in each it is specifically provided that a tax is to be levied in respect only of a beneficial interest having a clear value. Moreover, the meaning of the statute, fairly to be deduced from the reiteration in each of the five paragraphs of the beneficial interest and clear value as the subject of the tax, is greatly strengthened by the inference to be drawn from the fact that nowhere in the section is there contained language referring to technical estates in personalty or treating them as subject of taxation, despite the absence of the right to immediate possession or enjoyment. And coming to consider section 30, relating to the collection of the duty or tax imposed by section 29, the meaning of section 29, as just indicated, is made clearer. Thus by section 30 it is provided that "every executor, administrator or trustee, before payment and distribution [of a legacy or distributive share] to the legatees, or any parties entitled to beneficial interest therein, shall pay to the collector of the district of which the deceased person was a resident the amount of the duty or tax assessed upon such legacy or distributive share." It also requires that the schedule, etc., to be furnished by an executor, administrator or trustee to a collector or deputy collector shall contain the name of each person having a beneficial interest in the property in the charge or custody of the executor, etc., with a statement "of the clear value of such interest."

These provisions harmonize with the meaning which we have ascribed to section 29, since they clearly import that the tax is to be deducted from a beneficial interest which the beneficiary was entitled to enjoy, and from which, before payment or distribution, a deduction of the duty was to be made.

In view of the express provisions of the statute as to possession or enjoyment and beneficial interest and clear value, and of the absence of any express language exhibiting an intention to tax a mere technically vested interest in a case where the right to possession or enjoyment was subordinated to an uncertain contingency, it would, we think, be doing violence to the statute to construe it as taxing such an interest before the period when possession or enjoyment had attached. And such is the construction which has been affixed to some state statutes, the text of which lent themselves more strongly to the construction that it was the intention to subject to immediate taxation merely technical interests, without regard to a present right to possess or enjoy. Matter of Curtis, 142 N. Y. 219, 222; Matter of Roosevelt, 143 N. Y. 120.

In the Matter of Hoffman, 143 N. Y. 327, the court was called upon to construe the meaning of a statute, enacted in 1892, providing that "all taxes imposed by this act shall be due and payable at the time of the transfer, provided, however, that taxes upon the transfer of any estate, property or interest therein limited, conditioned, dependent or determinable upon the happening of any contingency or future event, by reason of which the fair market value thereof cannot be ascertained at the time of the transfer as herein provided shall accrue and become due and payable when the persons or corporations beneficially entitled thereto shall come into actual possession or enjoyment thereof." Laws 1892, chap. 399, sec. 3. The court said:

"We are obliged to follow one of two lines of construction. We must open all the nice and difficult questions which arise under a will as to the vesting of technical legal estates, although future and contingent, and assess the tax upon what are in reality only possibilities and chances, and so complicate the statute with the endless brood of difficult questions which gather about the construction of wills; or we must construe it in view of its aim and purpose and the object it seeks to ac

complish, and so subordinate technical phrases to the facts of actual and practical ownership. For taxation is a hard fact, and should attach only to such ownership, and may properly be compelled to wait until chances and possibilities develop into the truth of an actual estate possessed, or to which there exists an absolute right of future possession. I am not shutting my eyes to the statutory language, which is quite broad. The property taxed may be an estate 'for a term of years or for life or determinable upon any future or contingent estate,' or 'a remainder, reversion or other expectancy,' and the tables of mortality may be resorted to for the ascertainment of values. And yet, it is the 'fair market value,' the 'fair and clear market value,' which is to be assessed, and with the proviso that if that value cannot be at once ascertained, the appraisal is to be adjourned. I can scarcely imagine a contingency depending upon lives which mathematics could not solve by the doctrine of chances and the averages of mortality, and there could hardly be an adjournment unless upon some rare contingency having no averages, and the results in cases dependent upon lives might still leave the 'fair and clear market value' in doubt and yield sums which no sale in the market would produce."

So, also, the Supreme Court of Illinois, in construing an inheritance tax law of that State, containing language identical in some respects with that found in the act of Congress, observed in Billings v. The People, 189 Illinois, 472, 487:

"The tax imposed by section 1 of our statute is fixed upon the 'clear market value of the property received by each person' at the prescribed rate,—that is, as shown by the context, the clear market value of the beneficial interest so received. Surely, by such language it was not intended by the legislature that the courts should undertake to ascertain the clear market value of a mere possible interest which, from its very nature, could not have any market value, and which, for all practical purposes, such as taxation, is incapable of valuation. The courts, in order to enforce the immediate collection of such

taxes, as the statute seems to contemplate shall be done, cannot change the tax from one on succession to one on property; nor can they classify such remote and contingent interests, and fix the tax or rate of tax upon the whole class, as possibly the law-making power might do or provide for. No other course is left open in the practical administration of the statute than to postpone, as was done in this case, the assessing and collecting of the tax upon such remote and contingent interests as are incapable of valuation and as to which the... and the exemptions cannot be determined."

And see also Howe v. Howe, 179 Massachusetts, 546, 550. Indeed, in accord with its text and in harmony with the principles of construction expounded in the cases just cited, the act of 1898 was primarily construed by the officers charged with its administration as taxing only beneficial interests where the right to possess or enjoy had accrued. The rulings of the Internal Revenue Department to this effect were without deviation for several years.

The practice followed in carrying out the statute was illustrated by the assessment which was made in the case considered in Knowlton v. Moore, 178 U. S. 41, as exhibited in the schedule on page 44 of the report of that case. It was also by this construction that the tax in this case was originally assessed only upon the beneficial interest which was being enjoyed by Alfred G. Vanderbilt.

The change of construction was made because the administrative officers deemed it was required by the amendment of March 2, 1901, to the act of 1898: 31 Stat. 946. This is shown by a ruling made by the Commissioner of Internal Revenue on October 17, 1901, in which it was said (Treasury Decisions, Internal Revenue, vol. 4, p. 209):

"This office formerly held that the tax on reversionary interests was payable when the beneficiaries entered into the possession and enjoyment of their legacies.

"The amendment to section 30 of the war-revenue law, approved March 2, 1901, which went into effect July 1, 1901, VOL. CXCVI-32