County of San Luis Obispo v. Greenberg

Citations

• 120 Cal. 300
• 52 P. 797
• 1898 Cal. LEXIS 757

Syllabus

<p>County Ordinance — License Tax — General Merchandise and Liquor Business—Construction of Ordinance.—A section of a county ordinance providing that every person, association, firm, or corporation who, at a fixed place of business, sells any goods, wares, or merchandise, and whose receipts amount to over fifteen hundred dollars per quarter, shall pay a license tax of fifteen dollars per quarter, is to be read together with a following section providing that every person, etc., mentioned in the preceding section that sells or gives away spirituous, malt, or fermented or mixed liquors, in any quantity whatever, must pay an additional tax of fifteen dollars per quarter, and the latter section is to be construed not as imposing a license tax for a single act of selling or giving away liquor, but for continuing acts in connection with, and as part of, a business.</p> <p>Id.—Action to Recover License Tax—Admission of Liquor Business.—In an action to recover license taxes for a general merchandise and liquor business, where it is alleged and not denied that defendants were engaged in a general merchandise business at a fixed place of business in the county between certain dates, nine months apart, and that they also at said times and place sold fermented, malt, and mixed liquors in large quantities, it sufficiently appears that the action is to recover a license tax for a liquor business carried on in connection with the merchandise business, and not for any single act of selling liquor.</p> <p>Id.—Merchandise—Tax Depending upon Amount of Receipts.—A provision of a county ordinance making the amount of a license tax for a general merchandise business depend upon the amount of the receipts from the business transacted is not unreasonable or unjust.</p> <p>Id.—Attachment for License Tax—Validity of Ordinance Dispensing with Bonds.—A section of a county ordinance providing that in an action by the county to recover a license tax, a writ of attachment may issue without bonds,