122 Ga. 152 | Ga. | 1905
The Political Code, § 1649, provides that “Ordinaries are authorized to grant licenses to peddle, to indigent and infirm persons, upon such terms as they in their discretion may impose.’ The City of Atlanta, by its charter (Code of Atlanta §§ 64. 65, 70), is authorized to require any person engaged in any trade, business, etc., within the city, to register their names and búsiness and pay a license to carry on such trade or business; and express authority is given to it (§70) to levy and collect from “itinerant traders” such tax as may seem proper. The city has exercised its power by imposing a license tax upon peddlers. Justice has a permit granted under the provisions of the Political
We have no difficulty in affirming the judgment of the superior court. The section of the Political Code under which the permit of the ordinary in the present case was given must not be confused with section 1642, which gives to disabled Confederate veterans, and veterans of other wars therein named, the right to peddle without a license. That section, as originally enacted, did not give its beneficiaries the right to peddle in cities without the payment of a municipal tax; but by the act approved December 9, 1897 (Acts 1897, p.,24), it was so amended as to exempt them from such taxation. Section 1649 has never been so amended. To hold, in a case like the present, that the grant of a license, free or otherwise, from the ordinary, relieves the licensee from the necessity of paying a municipal tax to a city located in the county, would be, in effect, to hold that cities may not tax businesses, trades, or professions which have been thus licensed by the State or county. And this. would be directly in conflict with numerous rulings of this court. See Mayor v. Hines, 53 Ga. 616 ; Wright v. Atlanta, 54 Ga. 645; Lanier v. Macon 59 Ga. 187. It was not error to . overrule the certiorari. Judgment affirmed.