Singer Sewing MacHine Co. v. Brickell

Citations

• 233 U.S. 304
• 34 S. Ct. 493
• 58 L. Ed. 974
• 1914 U.S. LEXIS 1290

Syllabus

<p>Where orders are taken in one State for goods to be supplied from another State, which orders are transmitted to the latter State for acceptance or rejection, and filled from stock in that State, the business is interstate -commerce and not subject to a state license tax. Crenshaw v. Arkansas, 227 U. S. 389.</p> <p>The separate license tax imposed by the statutes of Alabama on the business of selling,or delivering sewing machines, either in person or through agents, for each county and for each wagon and team used in delivering the same is not, as to a corporation having regular stores established in the different counties to which it sends its goods in bulk and from which they are sold on orders to be approved by it at its home office, unconstitutional as denying due process of law, or as interfering with interstate commerce, or as denying equal protection of the law because it does not apply to merchants selling such machines' at regularly established places of business.</p> <p>In determining whether a state tax statute is constitutional, there is a presumption that the legislature intended to tax only that which it had the constitutional power to tax, and the statute will be-sustained if full and fair effect cam be given to its provisions' as confined wholly to intrastate business.</p> <p>While a state license statute if void in part may be wholly vqid where its provisions are not separable, it may be sustained so far as it relates to business wholly intrastate and held inapplicable as to interstate commerce; and so held that the Alabama sewing machine license tax ip constitutional as to those agencies of a foreign corporation which carry ornan intrastate business and inapplicable as to those agencies of such corporation which carry on a wholly interstate business.</p> <p>The classification of merchants selling sewing machines at regular places of business as distinguished from a manufacturer selling them by traveling Salesmen is not so unreasonable and arbitr