By paying the assessed deficiencies for the years in question and thereafter claiming refund, the taxpayer understandably sought to reduce the risk of interest payments or other penalties. Our holding today follows the direction set in Homestake Lead Co. of Missouri v. Director of Revenue, 759 S.W.2d 847 (Mo. banc 1988), where we rejected a similar argument of the Director in connection with a corporate income tax refund claim. There the taxpayers' initial protest of the Director's deficiency assessment was denied and the taxpayers paid the assessed deficiencies in full.
Both requirements must be met or no credit or refund is available to the taxpayer. As to the first requirement, this Court has previously defined the word "overpayment" for purposes of Section 143.801 in Homestake Lead v. Director of Revenue, 759 S.W.2d 847 (Mo. banc 1988). Relying on Community Federal Savings Loan Assoc. v. Director of Revenue, 752 S.W.2d 794, 798 (Mo. banc 1988), we held that "payment of a tax which was wholly unauthorized by law was an 'overpayment.'"
The majority's position appears to be that, while individual words in taxing statutes have the same meaning as they do in federal statutes, when the legislature strings these words together, they somehow develop a different meaning, even when they are combined in exactly the same way that they are in the Internal Revenue Code. Even assuming that it is possible to interpret a statutory section without referring to the definition of the individual terms that make it up, this Court has repeatedly held that section 143.091 places the Court squarely "under the interpretive thumb of the federal courts" in interpreting Missouri's tax code.Hiett, 899 S.W.2d at 872 (looking to federal statutory and caselaw to ascertain the meaning of "negligence" in section 143.751); Dow Chemical, 834 S.W.2d at 745 (under section 143.091, "[i]t is not only the text of a statute that makes the legislative intent known, however, but also the judicial decisions that construe and give effect to the statute"); Homestake Lead Co. of Missouri v. Director of Revenue, 759 S.W.2d 847, 848 (Mo. banc 1988) (legislature's enactment of section 143.091 leads this Court to look to "the federal pattern" of tax procedure to determine legislative intent); King v. Procter Gamble Distributing Co., 671 S.W.2d 784 (Mo. banc 1984) (looking to federal caselaw, regulations and revenue rulings to define "income tax"); Bartlett Co. Grain v. Director of Revenue, 649 S.W.2d 220, 223 (Mo. banc 1983) ("Sections 143.091 and 143.961 indicate the legislative intent to adopt, where possible, federal precedents and regulations in the construction of the Missouri income tax statutes"); Goldberg, 606 S.W.2d at 178 (looking to federal law, regulations, and revenue rulings). See also Herschend v. Director of Revenue, 896 S.W.2d 458, 461 (Mo. banc 1995) (Robertson, J., dissenting) (Section 143.091 "means this Court must look to federal law unless the statutes expressly define the relevant term differently.
Section 139.031 does not preclude resort to other statutory provisions which provide available routes for the recovery of taxes. Homestake Lead v. Dir. of Revenue, 759 S.W.2d 847 (Mo. banc 1988). As noted earlier, past cases have strictly construed the statutory sections providing the tax appeal procedure and as such an amendment to appellant's original ยง 139.031 protest suit would not have survived.