Record
Court opinion
1953-03-09
CourtListener (Free Law Project), text of the opinion
United States v. Kahriger, 345 U.S. 22 (1953)
Supreme Court decision of 9 March 1953 upholding the occupational tax and registration requirement that the Revenue Act of 1951 placed on persons in the business of accepting wagers.
- Date
- 1953-03-09
- Kind
- court-opinion
- Retrieved
- 2026-10-12
- Docket
- No. 167
- Rights
- Opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States, a federal work in the public domain under 17 U.S.C. § 105. CourtListener (Free Law Project) hosts the text; it is not the source institution.
Argued December 16-17, 1952; decided March 9, 1953. Justice Reed wrote for the Court that the appeal concerned “the occupational tax provisions of the Revenue Act of 1951,” “which levy a tax on persons engaged in the business of accepting wagers, and require such persons to register with the Collector of Internal Revenue.” The District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania had dismissed an information charging that Kahriger was in the business of accepting wagers and “willfully failed to register for and pay the occupational tax.” The challenges were that the tax invaded the police power reserved to the states and that registration violated the privilege against self-incrimination. The Court rejected both: “Reversed.”
Justice Jackson concurred, “but with such doubt that if the minority agreed upon an opinion which did not impair legitimate use of the taxing power I probably would join it.” Justice Black, with whom Justice Douglas concurred, dissented on Fifth Amendment grounds, and Justice Frankfurter dissented.
In 1968, in Marchetti v. United States, the Court said it had taken that case “to consider whether Kahriger and Lewis still have vitality,” and held that a proper claim of the privilege is a complete defence. The 1951 wagering-tax provisions are filed in the Laws section.