Request By:
Mr. David L. Logsdon
Hardin County Court Clerk
P.O. Box 490
Elizabethtown, Kentucky 42701
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
KRS 142.050 relates to a state real estate transfer tax, imposed at the rate of fifty cents (50 ) for each $500 of value or fraction thereof, which value is declared in the deed upon the privilege of transferring title to real property.
Subsection (8) of that statute deals with the exceptions to the tax. Your question specifically concerns subsection (8)(b), which reads:
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"(8) The tax imposed by this section shall not apply to a transfer of title:
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"(b) To (in the event of a deed of gift or deed with nominal consideration) or from the United States of America, this state, any city or county within this state, of any instrumentality, agency, or subdivision hereof;"
Your question reads:
"Does this mean that if there is a consideration of value transferred that tax should be collected on deeds to or from governments or government agencies?"
This subsection (8)(b) means that all deeds "from" the United States of America, this state, any city or county within Kentucky, or "from" any instrumentality, agency, or subdivision of the state, are exempt from the real estate transfer tax, regardless of the consideration paid, nominal or substantial. (Emphasis added). This covers deeds where these governmental units are grantors.
Now, as concerns deeds wherein the United States of America, the state of Kentucky, any city or county in Kentucky, or any instrumentality, agency, or subdivision thereof, are grantees, such deeds are exempt from this tax only if such deeds involve deeds of gift or deeds with nominal consideration.
You will note that the parenthetical expression "(in the event of a deed of gift or deed with nominal consideration) " applies only to the enumerated governmental units where such units are the grantees in the deeds. This is so because of the immediate juxtaposition of the parenthetical expression to the word "to", which it modifies.
While we can find no Kentucky case dealing with this specific grammatical and legal principle, many cases of other jurisdictions reflect a general rule.
The general rule is based upon a rule of grammar. "It is a general rule of statutory construction as well as grammatical construction that a modifying clause is confined to the last antecedent, unless there is something in the subject matter or dominant purpose which requires a different interpretation." (Emphasis added). Winokur v. Michigan State Board of Denistry, 366 Mich. 261, 114 N.W.2d 233 (1962) 235. The following cases adopt the general rule: Elbert, Ltd. v. Gross, Cal., 260 P.2d 35 (1953); McCall v. Potlatch Forests, Idaho, 208 P.2d 799 (1949); and State v. Congdon, 76 N.J. Super. 493, 185 A.2d 21 (1962) 26.
The Texas case of City of Corsicana v. Willmann, Tex., 216 S.W.2d 175 (1949) 176, points out that the doctrine of Last Antecedent is neither controlling nor inflexible. The court said that the rule may be rebutted by circumstances, and that it should not be applied without regard to the meaning of the language of the statute as a whole. The court added that this general rule is not applicable when a further extension is clearly required by the intent and meaning of the context. The Supreme Court of Oregon, in Johnson v. Craddock, Or., 365 P.2d 89 (1961), wrote that the rule will be applied only when its application is consistent with the legislative intention. The court added a corollary to the rule in saying that a slight indication of the legislative intent to extend the relative term to a more remote antecedent is sufficient.
The "last antecedent" has been characterized by the Supreme Court of Washington, In Re Kurtzman's Estate, Wash., 396 P.2d 786 (1964) 790, as being the "last word, phrase or clause that can be made an antecedent without impairing the meaning of the sentence."
As relates to KRS 142.050(8)(b), and applying the doctrine of last antecedent as exposed in the above cases, we conclude that the parenthetical expression "(in the event of a deed of gift or deed with nominal consideration) " clearly was intended to apply to conveyances of real property to the enumerated governmental units, since the context in no way suggests that the parenthetical expression was intended to apply to conveyances both to and from such governmental units. Thus the context and pervading intent are supportive of our interpretation. It is obvious, from reading the whole subsection (8)(b) that the legislature intended to distinguish between deeds to those units and deeds from those units. See 82 C.J.S., Statutes, §§ 334 and 340.