Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 32.djvu/445

409 INDIRECT ENCROACHMENT ON FEDERAL AUTHORITY 409 lieve that the Supreme Court will insist that a gross-receipts tax, im- posed as a substitute for property taxes, must be a fair substitute, and must not through excessive rates of levy take disproportionate toll from a selected class of taxpayers engaged in interstate commerce. The gross-receipts tax declared invalid in Crew Levick Co. v. Pennsylvania ^^^ was imposed imder the following provision of the statutes : "Each wholesale vender of or wholesale dealer in goods, wares and merchandise shall pay an annual mercantile license tax of three dollars, and all persons so engaged shall pay one-half mill additional on each dollar of the whole volume, gross, of business transacted annually." ^^° The state court had called the tax one "upon the business of vend- ing merchandise." ^^^ The complainant during the year in question had received about $47,000 from intra-state sales, so that there was no doubt that it was subject to an occupation tax. It confined its objections to the levy on receipts of about $430,000 from customers in foreign countries, insisting that a tax on such receipts was both a regulation of foreign commerce and an impost upon exports. Of these objections Mr. Justice Pitney said that "although dual in form, the question may be treated as a single one, since it is obvious that, for the purposes of this case, an impost upon exports and a regulation of foreign commerce may be regarded as inter- changeable terms." ^^2 The decision may therefore be treated as one on the law of inter- state commerce. The Crew Levick case insistently demands comparison with Ficklen v. Shelby County Taxing District ^^^ on which the Common- wealth of Pennsylvania unsuccessfully rehed. Formal distinctions between the statutes in the two cases readily suggest themselves. Mr. Ficklen would not have been subject to the Shelby County law if he had not asked for a license to do a general business, but had held himself out to do only interstate business. The Crew Levick Company would have been taxed under the Pennsylvania statute "9 24s U. S. 292, 38 Sup. Ct. Rep. 126 (1917). "0 Ibid., 293. 1** Ibid., 295. i<2 Ibid., 295. ^^ Note 23, supra.