Opinion of the Court
much of it by nonresidents who did not live on or farm the land but instead hoped to sell it for a profit. McClure, 24 W. Va., at 564. Many of these nonresidents “wholly neglected to pay the taxes” on the land, id., at 565, so Virginia provided that title to any taxpayer’s land was completely “lost, forfeited and vested in the Commonwealth” if the taxpayer failed to pay taxes within a set period, 1790 Va. Acts p. 5, §5. This solution was short lived, however; the Commonwealth repealed the forfeiture scheme in 1814 and once again sold “so much only of each tract of land … as will be sufficient to discharge the” debt. 1813 Va. Acts p. 21, §27. Virginia’s “exceptional” and temporary forfeiture scheme carries little weight against the overwhelming consensus of its sister States. See Martin v. Snowden, 59 Va. 100, 138 (1868).
The consensus that a government could not take more property than it was owed held true through the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment. States, including Minnesota, continued to require that no more than the minimum amount of land be sold to satisfy the outstanding tax debt.[1] The County identifies just three States that deemed delinquent property entirely forfeited for failure to pay taxes. See 1836 Me. Laws p. 325, §4; 1869 La. Acts p. 159, §63; 1850 Miss. Laws p. 52, §4.[2] Two of these laws did not last.
- ↑ Many of these new States required that the land be sold to whichever buyer would “pay [the tax debt] for the least number of acres” and provided that the land forfeited to the State only if it failed to sell “for want of bidders” because the land was worth less than the taxes owed. 1821 Ohio pp. 27–28, §§7, 10; see also 1837 Ark. Acts pp. 14–17, §§83, 100; 1844 Ill. Laws pp. 13, 18, §§51, 77; 1859 Minn. Laws pp. 58, 61, §§23, 38; 1859 Wis. Laws Ch. 22, pp. 22–23, §§7, 9; cf. Iowa Code pp. 120–121, §§766, 773 (1860) (requiring that property be offered for sale “until all the taxes shall have been paid”); see also O’Brien v. Coulter, 2 Blackf. 421, 425 (Ind. 1831) (per curiam) (“[S]o much only of the defendant’s property shall be sold at one time, as a sound judgment would dictate to be sufficient to pay the debt.”).
- ↑ North Carolina amended its laws in 1842 to permit the forfeiture of
