Phelps v. City of Tacoma

Citations

• 15 Wash. 367
• 46 P. 400
• 1896 Wash. LEXIS 199

Syllabus

<p>APPEAL — ASSIGNMENT OF ERROR — MUNICIPAL CORPORATIONS — POWER TO REFUND MONEY RECEIVED FROM ILLEGAL TAX SALES — VOLUNTARY PAYMENT.</p> <p>An assignment of error that the court erred in overruling a demurrer to an answer is sufficiently definite, especially when the court in so ruling does not disclose its reasons therefor.</p> <p>Where a city has power under its charter to provide for the levy and collection of taxes, it has power to authorize the repayment of moneys paid into its treasury upon void tax sales.</p> <p>Such city cannot, however, pass an ordinance which would relieve those who had purchased at void tax sales before the passage of the ordinance, as such provisions, when applied to past tax sales, cannot be construed as included in the power given the city to regulate the assessment and collection of taxes.</p> <p>Moneys paid for current taxes by the purchaser at a void tax sale, under the supposition that he had acquired title under such tax sale, fall under the rule that moneys voluntarily paid on account of taxes cannot be recovered.</p> <p>Money paid into a city treasury under a void tax sale, which the city was authorized by ordinance to refund, did not become the absolute property of the city, and its repayment would not be the incurring of a debt, within the meaning of the constitutional provision forbidding cities to incur indebtedness beyond a certain limit.</p>