Roach v. Ephren

Citations

• 82 Fla. 523
• 90 So. 609

Syllabus

<p>1. There is no express limitation of the power of the legislature to provide for a tax on licenses, hut the organic requirements of due process and equal protection of the laws should be observed in levying or in' authorizing the levy and collection of license taxes.</p> <p>2. Every act of a municipality through its ordinances should he within the powers expressly or impliedly conferred, should he based upon a proper classification of subjects, should be reasonable and applicable alike to all under practically similar conditions and circumstances, and should not violate any provision or principle of law.</p> <p>3. In exercising the express authority “to prescribe the jurisdiction and powers” of municipalities, the legislature is not empowered to confer upon municipalities authority to impose any and all license taxes within the municipality that the Legislature could enact for State purposes.</p> <p>4. The reasonableness of a statute is not open to judicial review unless organic law is thereby violated; but the reasonableness of a municipal ordinance is subject to judicial determination.</p> <p>5. Even if a municipal license tax of $2,500.00 imposed on wholesale peddlers, when considered with the license tax of $75.00 imposed on retail peddlers, is not so arbitrary and excessive as to amount to a denial to the former of the equal protection of the laws, the wholesale peddler’s license tax is clearly unreasonable, in that no question of public health, morals or safety being involved, the difference in the license tax imposed on wholesale peddlers and retail peddlers is so great that it can have no fair relation to differences between the business done by the two peddlers.</p> <p>6. The charter powers of a city “to restrain and punish the forestalling and regrading of provisions,” does not warrant an arbitrary and grossly unreasonable discrimination in imposing license taxes.</p>