Osborne v. State

Citations

• 33 Fla. 162

Syllabus

<p>. 1. A state can not tax or regulate interstate commerce, or make the payment of a tax or the taking out of a license a condition precedent to carrying on interstate commerce. A state statute which does so, either expressly or in effect, is offensive to the commerce clause of the Constitution of the United States, and void at least to that extent. The same is true as to foreign commerce.</p> <p>2. A state statute which imposes a tax, in general terms, on the doing of specified kinds of business, or the pursuit of designated occupations, in the state, and requires that a license shall be taken out before any such business or avocation shall be done or engaged in, should not be construed to apply to any business of the kind that may constitute interstate commerce, but only to business that is domestic or state commerce and to persons engaged or intending to engage in such domestic or state business.</p> <p>8. Although interstate commerce can not be taxed or regulated by-state legislation, and the commerce clause of the Federal Constitution exempts all such commerce from regulation or taxation by state authority, yet the doing of business that constitutes interstate commerce by a person who is also at the same time engaged in business, of the same kind, that constitutes state or local commerce, can not be made a bar or exemption of the local or state commerce business from taxation or regulation by state authority.</p> <p>- 4. The ninth section of the general revenue law of 1893 (Chapter - 4115, approved June 2nd, 1893), provides that no person shall engage in or manage the business, profession or avocation men tioned therein without first taking out a state license as provided therein and paying the occupational tax and license fee . prescribed thereby; and it authorizes counties and incorporporated cities and towns to impose further taxes. As to express companies its special provisions, substituting figures for words, are as follows: “All express companies doing b