624 HARVARD LAW REVIEW under the same obligation to obey as if they were citizens. Such a con- tract is valid or invalid as our laws declare. When the law commands that if they, or any other persons, whether residents or not, make a certain contract here they must pay a certain tax for the privilege, the command is personal, addressed to them as persons then within the state." Jurisdiction to exact a license fee, therefore, depends upon the place where the licensed act is done. Thus a license fee may be exacted from a foreigner for making a sale within the state; ^^* for operating a railroad within the state; ^^^ or for using sleeping- cars within the state.^^^ So an excise tax may be laid upon the payment of a dividend to a nonresident shareholder/^^ or upon the receipt of insurance premiums from residents of the state ;^®' and such a tax may be laid upon the performance within the state of a contract of sale made in anotheV state.^^^ Though the international jurisdiction of a state to levy an excise tax is complete, its exercise may often be limited by the Constitu- tion of the United States.^^^ A consideration of such limitations is, however, beyond the scope of the present article. VTII. Inheritance Tax One of the most important privileges granted by the law is that of succeeding to the property of a deceased person. . Since at the moment before death the successor has no interest whatever in the property, and the moment after death an interest has vested in him, there must have been the creation or shifting of a legal interest, not the continuance of a preexisting one; and this re- quires an act of the law. For furnishing this law of succession, the sovereign may levy an excise tax, or, as it is often called, a death duty."« "» Harrison v. Vicksburg, 3 Sm. & M. (Miss.) 581 (1844); People v. Reardon, 184 N. Y. 431, 77 N. E. 970 (1906). 190 Maine v. Grand Trunk Ry. Co., 142 U. S. 217 (1891). "1 Pullman Southern Car Co. v. Gaines, 3 Tenn. Ch. 587 (1877). 192 Oliver v. Washington Mills, 11 Allen (Mass.) 268 (1865). 1" Equitable Life Society v. Pennsylvania, 238 U. S. 143 (1915). »»* Shriver v. Pittsburg, 66 Pa. 446 (1870). "* See, for instance, Gloucester Ferry Co. v. Pennsylvania, 114 U. S. 196 (1885); Sault Ste. Marie v. International Transit Co., 234 U. S. 333 (1914).
- •* Kochersperger v. Drake, 167 HI. 122, 47 N. E. 321 (1897).
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