File No. 812.512/774.
The Acting Secretary of State to Consul Simpich.
Washington, August 31, 1915.
Sir: The Department has received your despatch No. 324 of August 20, 1915, reporting that a number of requests is being made of your Consulate by American owners of taxable property in Sonora for advice concerning the tax payments, and you request instructions in the matter.
The Department must leave it to the interested American citizens to determine in each case whether local conditions affecting the payment of taxes are such as to render it advisable to make such payment.
Obviously the Department can give no assurances to American citizens, who on account of such conditions may refrain from paying their taxes, that non-payment will not result in prejudice to their titles. However, in any given case in which the Mexican authorities should attempt to invalidate the title of an American citizen to land on which he had refrained from paying taxes for the reason that local conditions made it apparently inadvisable or impossible to make such payment, the Department would protest against such action of the Mexican authorities, provided it should be made to appear that the American citizen in question was justified in his nonpayment.
I am [etc.]