It is in the power of the Legislature to tax the company for the pipes. This may be done, as in New York, by a special provision making the pipes real estate of the company for purposes of taxation,[1] I or as in Massachusetts, by taxing the value of the company's franchise, which is of course, in an indirect way, taxation of the pipes, since the value of the franchise includes the value of the pipes.[2]An expedient holding gas-pipes to be part of the machinery of manufacture[3] is questionable in point of fact; if in fact they were part of the machinery of the company, they might well be taxed to it as such, though the legal ownership were in another.
In the absence, however, of a special provision of the statutes, pipes in the public street should be taxed neither as the real estate nor as the personal property of the company that lays them.
