183 Ga. 834 | Ga. | 1936
On April 10, 1936, W. H. C. Goodman and twelve others filed a suit against the City of Atlanta, to enjoin against enforcement of an occupation tax ordinance from which the plaintiffs 'contended they were exempt on the ground that the business in which they were engaged was that of vending and selling perishable farm products, including products of grove and orchard. The defendant filed a demurrer and an answer. The court did not rule on the demurrer, but granted an interlocutory injunction on the pleadings considered as evidence; and the defendant excepted.
Section 92-1602 of the Code of 1933 levies a tax of $50 for each county, on peddlers and traveling vendors, with the proviso that “no vendor or peddler of perishable farm products, including products of grove and orchard, shall be required, under this section or any other section of this law to pay any license fee or tax, state, county, or municipal.” Section 5-603 provides that “No municipal corporation shall levy or assess a tax on cotton or the sales thereof, nor levy or assess a tax on any agricultural products raised in this State, or the sales thereof (other than cotton), until after the expiration of three months from the time of their introduction into said corporations.” The plaintiffs rely upon each of these sections as entitling them to the exemption claimed.
’ Section 92-1602 is a codification of paragraph 84 of section 2 of the general tax act of 1927 (Ga. L. 1927, p. 82), as amended by section 8 of the act of 1929 (Ga. L. 1929, p. 62). On March 28, 1935, the legislature passed a general tax act to become effective January 1, 1936. Ga. L. 1935, p. 11. This act, like the act of 1927, was a full and comprehensive statute purporting to deal exhaustively with the subject of occupation taxes. The act of 1935 contained no provision similar to that which appeared in the act of 1927, which was later embodied in the Code of 1933, as § 92-1602. In view of the scope and purposes of the respective statutes, the omission can not be explained except on the theory of an intention to repeal; and in the recent case of Fidelity Fruit & Produce Co. v. Atlanta, 183 Ga. 698 (189 S. E. 527), it was held that the identical statute was repealed by the act of 1935. While repeals by implication are not favored and the intention to repeal npust be plain and unmistakable, yet a repeal by implication will result where a statute is manifestly intended to cover the
The decisions in City of Atlanta v. Kirk, 174 Ga. 763 (164 S. E. 64), Warren v. Atlanta, 179 Ga. 900 (177 S. E. 706), and City of Atlanta v. McCullough, 182 Ga. 726 (186 S. E. 729), are not applicable, in view of the change in the law as made by the act of 1935,
Judgment reversed.