23 Pa. Super. 267 | Pa. Super. Ct. | 1903
Opinion by
The appellee is the owner of a large body of land and water, and is engaged in the business of taking natural ice from its own lake, storing the same in its own warehouses, upon the margin thereof, and selling said ice to such persons as order it in carload lots. The company has no store or other house for the purpose of vending said ice, nor does it buy ice for the pun pose of selling the same. It merely disposes of its own product, so harvested and stored.
It is contended on the part of the commonwealth, the appellant, that the company is subject to the mercantile license tax, “ on vendors of, or dealers in, goods, wares and merchandise,” imposed by the Act of May 2, 1899, P. L. 184.
The statute in question imposed a tax upon business of a designated character, and not upon property : Knisely v. Cotterel, 196 Pa., 614; Commonwealth v. Bailey, Banks and Biddle Company, 20 Pa. Superior Ct. 210. If the business of the appellee comes within any of the classes designated by statute, it must, under the terms of the case stated, be that of a “retail vendor of, or dealer in, goods, wares and merchandise.” Taxation of this character was not new to the revenue system of the commonwealth. The Act of April 2, 1821, 7 Sm. L. 471, and March 4, 1824, P. L. 32, imposed a tax upon “ every person who shall deal in the selling ” of foreign merchandise ; and the Act of April 7, 1830, P. L. 387, graduated the tax according to a classification based upon the amount of annual sales. By the Act of May 4,1841, sec. 10, P. L. 307, this tax was “ extended to apply to all persons engaged in the selling or vending ” of all merchandise, of whatever kind or nature, whether foreign or domestic. A question would seem subsequently to have arisen whether a manufacturer who kept a store for the sale of goods of his own manufacture was subject to the tax; and by the 11th section of the Act of April 22, 1846, P. L. 486, the previously existing laws in relation to the taxation of dealers were extended to all manufacturers who kept a store or 'warehouse for the purpose of vending and disposing of goods separate from their shop or manufactory. It
The terms, “ vendor of, or dealer in, goods, wares and merchandise,” used in the 1st section of the act of May 2, 1899, to designate the business subject to the tax, having been used ‘in former statutes, and their meaning having been the subject of judicial inquiry and determination, they must be assumed, to have been used in the sense in which they had been interpreted by the court of last resort, in the absence of anything in the statute requiring a different interpretation: Commonwealth v. Bailey et al., supra. We find in the provisions of this statute nothing which would warrant a departure from this principle. The act, on the contrary, contained internal evidence that it was the legislative intention to deal only with mercantile pursuits. The title is “ an act to provide revenue by imposing a mercantile license on vendors of, or dealers in, goods,” etc. The 5tlx section which regulates the manner of making the assessment empowered the county treasurer to “ require the owner or business manager (of the company subject to taxation) to appear before him in person, with the books and accounts of his mercantile establishment for interrogation and examination.” The construction of the act contended for by the learned counsel for the commonwealth would subject to
The judgment is affirmed.
