events the Crew Levick Company was engaged in a taxable occupation. It was taxable and was taxed. The only dispute was over the measure of the tax. The Supreme Court disallowed that part of the measure which embraced receipts from commerce not confined to the state. It did not hold the Pennsylvania law void. If later the Pennsylvania court interprets the law as not applicable to concerns that refrain from local business,[1] the Supreme Court will have difficulty in applying the Crew Levick case without definitely overruling the Ficklen case.
In the absence of such a restrictive interpretation by the state court, the Supreme Court followed established practice[2] in refusing to rewrite the state law so as to bring it within the doctrine of the Ficklen case. Taking the Pennsylvania law as it reads, it plainly taxes interstate as well as local occupations; and, in so far as it makes the former a subject of taxation, it easily comes within the condemnation visited on those imposts which are "on interstate commerce itself" or on receipts from such commerce "as such."[3] Pennsylvania had not encased its demand in the fiction coating which is essential to bring it within those levies on interstate commerce which have been regarded as "merely incidental or indirect." At times this coating has seemed to need no other ingredient than words. The Crew Levick case naturally excites our curiosity whether a merely verbal compound can in these days turn poison into meat.
Mr. Justice Pitney's opinion indicates that it cannot. Not a little that he says is quite as applicable to the tax sustained in the Ficklen case as to that held invalid in the Crew Levick case. Of the former he says that "undoubtedly that case is near the border
- ↑ For an instance of such construction by a state court of a statute imposing license taxes varying in amount according to the population of the towns and cities in which business was carried on, see Osborne v. Florida, 164 U. S. 650, 17 Sup. Ct. Rep. 214 (1897). In the cases of taxes on gross receipts the federal courts will make the necessary separation, when it is feasible, and hold void only that part on interstate receipts. Ratterman v. Western Union Telegraph Co., 127 U. S. 411, 8 Sup. Ct. Rep. 1127 (1888). But where a specific fee is imposed, the Supreme Court will not assume that the subject taxed is local business only if the language of the statute applies to any or all business. See cases cited in note 146.
- ↑ Leloup v. Port of Mobile, 127 U. S. 640, 8 Sup. Ct. Rep. 1380 (1888); Crutcher v. Kentucky, 141 U. S. 47, 11 Sup. Ct. Rep. 851 (1891); Williams v. Talladega, 226 U. S. 404, 33 Sup. Ct. Rep. 116 (1912).
- ↑ See cases cited in note 19, supra.
