473 Opinion of the Court. excises on the transfer of property from a decedent and both take effect at the instant of transfer. Thus both are laid on the same subject, and neither has priority in time over the other. Subject to exceptions not material here, the power of taxation granted to the United States does not curtail or interfere with the taxing power of the several States. This power in the two governments is generally so far concurrent as to render it admissible for both, each under its own laws and for its own purposes, to tax the same subject at the same time. A few citations will make this plain. In Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1, 199, Chief Justice Marshall, speaking for this Court, said: "Congress is authorized to lay and collect taxes, etc., to pay the debts, and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States. This does not interfere with the power of the States to tax for the support of their own governments; nor is the exercise of this power by the States an exercise of any portion of the power that is granted to the United States. In imposing taxes for State purposes, they are not doing what Congress is empowered to do. Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States. When, then, each government exercises the power of taxation, neither is exercising the power of the other." Mr. Justice Story, in his Commentaries on the Constitution, § 1068, said: "The power of Congress, in laying taxes, is not necessarily or naturally inconsistent with that of the States. Each may lay a tax on the same property, without interfering with the action of the other." And in Knowlton v. Moore, 178 U. S. 41, 58-60, Mr. Justice White, speaking for this Court, said that "under our constitutional system both the national and state governments, moving in their respective orbits, have a common authority to tax many and diverse objects; " and he further pointed out that the transfer of property on death "is a usual subject of taxation" and one which falls within that common authority. Opinion of the Court. 268 U.S. With this understanding of the power in virtue of which the two taxes are imposed, we are of opinion that neither the United States nor the State is under any constitutional obligation in determining the amount of its tax to make any deduction on account of the tax of the other. With both the matter of making such a deduction rests in legislative discretion. In their present statutes both direct that such a deduction be not made. It is not as if the tax of one, unless and until paid, presented an obstacle to the exertion of the power of the other. Here both had power to tax and both exercised it as of the same moment. Neither encroached on the sphere or power of the other. The estate out of which each required that its tax be paid is much more than ample for the payment of both taxes. No question of supremacy can arise in such a situation. Whether, if the estate were not sufficient to pay both taxes, that of the United States should be preferred (see Lane County v. Oregon, 7 Wall. 71, 77) need not be considered. That question is not involved here. The objection that when no deduction is made on account of the federal tax the state tax becomes to that extent a tax on the federal tax and not a tax on the transfer is answered by what already has been said. But by way of repetition it may be observed that what the State is taxing is the transfer of particular property, not such property depleted by the federal tax. The two taxes were concurrently imposed and stand on the same plane, save as the United States possibly might have a preferred right of enforcement if the estate were insufficient to pay both. In conclusion we hold, first, that the value of the tangible personalty in New York and Massachusetts should not have been included in determining the clear value on which the Pennsylvania tax was computed; secondly, that in determining such clear value the stocks in corporations 473 Statement of the Case. of other States should not have been included at their full value without deducting the transfer tax paid to such States in respect of those stocks; and thirdly, that there was no error in refusing to make any deduction from the clear value on account of the estate tax imposed by the United States. Petitions for certiorari were presented in these cases, but as the cases are properly here on writs of error, the petitions will be denied. Judgments reversed on writs of error. MILES, FORMER COLLECTOR, v. GRAHAM. ERROR TO THE DISTRICT COURT OF THE UNITED STATES FOR THE DISTRICT OF MARYLAND. No. 53. Argued March 16, 1925.-Decided June 1, 1925. 1. Under Art. III, § 1, of the Constitution it is the duty of Congress definitely to declare the amount which a federal judge shall receive from time to time out of the public funds, and the times of payment; and the amount thus specified becomes his compensation which is protected against diminution during his continuance in office. Evans v. Gore, 253 U. S. 245. P. 506. 2. So held where the salary of a judge of the Court of Claims was fixed and the appointment was made after enactment of the Revenue Act of 1918," which prescribed that the official compensation of all the federal judges should be included in their gross income in computing their income taxes. 3. This provision of the Revenue Act for taxation of income can not be treated as reducing the salaries of the judges of the Court of Claims specifically fixed by later enactment. P. 509. 284 Fed. 878, affirmed. ERROR to a judgment of the District Court against an internal revenue collector in an action by a judge of the Court of Claims to recover a sum which the defendant had exacted of him as an income tax. Argument for Defendant in Error. 268 U.S. Mr. The Solicitor General, for plaintiff in error. Robert P. Reeder, Special Assistant to the Attorney General, was on the brief. In Evans v. Gore this court did not suggest any doubt of the power of Congress to impose taxes which should apply to salaries of federal judges appointed after the enactment of the taxing statutes. The imposition of the tax in that case constituted a diminution of a salary already existing during the judge's continuance in office, and was therefore unconstitutional. But here, the judge was appointed after the enactment of the statute. It is submitted that, within the meaning of the Constitution, the diminution of the salary did not occur during his term of office. The proceedings of the Constitutional Convention show that it did not intend that the provision for the protection of judicial salaries should apply to any diminution of the compensation of judges appointed to office after a statute making the diminution had been enacted. While Article III, § 1, of the Constitution forbids Congress to tax a very small proportion of the persons embraced within the broad terms of § 213 of the Revenue Act of 1918, that section is not thereby rendered inoperative as to all other persons who come within its provisions. It is clear that Congress might constitutionally have imposed a tax which would have fallen upon the defendant in error after his appointment to office, and that, in enacting the law of 1918, Congress intended to authorize the tax which was collected from him. The law was a permanent taxing statute, dealing not merely with the taxes which might be collected for the year 1918 but with the taxes for years to come. Messrs. William L. Rawls and William L. Marbury for defendant in error. At the time of the assessment and collection of the taxes in question there was no validly existing law author 501 Argument for Defendant in Error. izing their exaction. Section 213 of the Act of February 24, 1919, c. 18, 40 Stat. 1062, was before this Court in the case of Evans v. Gore, 253 U. S. 245, wherein it was held that the tax imposed in pursuance thereof upon the salary" of a judge of an inferior court of the United States was contrary to the constitutional prohibition against the diminution of his salary during his continuance in office, and was therefore invalid. The intention being clear to tax all judges, the operation of the clause cannot be limited without re-writing it so as to give it a narrower scope than it was the intention of Congress it should have, a task which the courts will not assume. Where the legislative w is expressed in a single, indivisible provision, obviously incapable of modification without destroying its integrity, no separation or severance is logically or legally possible. Hill v. Wallace, 259 U. S. 44; Child Labor Tax Case, 259 U. S. 20; Butts v. Merchants Transportation Co., 230 U. S. 126. In Evans v. Gore, supra, the power of Congress to impose a tax upon the compensation received for their services by judges was denied. This denial we understand was based both upon the specific prohibition in the Constitution against diminution of the compensation of the judges, and the limitation necessarily implied upon the taxing power from the erection by the Constitution of the three separate and independent departments of the Government. In any event it follows necessarily from the narrowest interpretation that can be put upon that decision, that the taxing power as attempted to be exercised with respect to the compensation of judges by the Act of 1918, even when confined in its application to those judges appointed thereafter, is in violation of the Constitution. It must be admitted, when the comprehensive nature of the taxing power is considered, that whatever amount is exacted by virtue of the Act of 1918 from a federal judge on account of his having received compensation as such from |