87 F.2d 768 | 5th Cir. | 1937
The decree appealed from adjudged unconstitutional as applied to the complainant-appellee Janet McNee, because impairing the obligation of her contract as a bond creditor of St. Lucie Inlet District and Port Authority, a statute of Florida enacted in 1933 (Acts Fla. 1933, c. 16252), which made “bonds or matured interest coupons of all counties or other taxing districts receivable at par and in lieu of money in redemption of tax-sales certificates or other evidences of tax liens held in the name of the State * * * for all purposes other than the levy made for State taxes.” Section 6. The act expressly requires the state’s part of the taxes to be paid in cash, the payment in bonds and coupons being restricted to taxes due to a county or other taxing district, and that the bonds and coupons received be held uncanceled for adjustment’ of accounts between the county and taxing districts interested.
The taxing district here involved issued bonds in 1926 of which the complainant-appellee owns $43,000. The special statute authorizing them required the levy each year of a tax upon all the real and personal property of the district sufficient to pay interest on the bonds and to provide a sinking fund to pay the principal, the tax to be collected as other taxes are. Taxes were levied accordingly in
The statutes regulating the collection of- property taxes in Florida are fully stated in the above-cited cases. Such taxes, while not a personal charge against the property owner, are a lien upon the property assessed. When not paid, the property is offered publicly for sale and, if no one will bid the amount of the taxes charged against it, it is knocked off to the state and a sale certificate issued accordingly. The property may be redeemed by the owner within two years. If not then redeemed, the title vests in the state but may still be redeemed until otherwise disposed of. The cited cases make it plain that the state holds but as trustee for the taxing authorities concerned, and, when it receives money for the property, the money should go to discharge in due order their claims. The act here under examination recognizes .this trust in providing that bonds and coupons received to rédeem certificates held by the state shall be kept uncanceled until an account 'is had with the taxing districts involved. Prior to the recent acts, the taxes were payable only in money, and the taxpayer was not suffered to offset a debt held by him against the taxing authority but had to pay in cash and take his chances with other creditors in getting satisfaction of his debt. Finnegan v. City of Fernandina, 15 Fla. 379, 21 Am.Rep. 292. The law requiring the payment of taxes in money without offset and applying to the tax demand what is collected on redemption of tax-sale certificates entered into the bond contract of the St. Lucie Inlet District in 1926 and was part of its obligation, the impairment of which by the state is pro? hibited both by the Federal and State Constitutions. The taxes promised to be laid and collected constituted the security for the bonds and they stand much as property pledged to the debt would. Louisiana ex rel. Southern Bank v. Pilsbury, 105 U. S. 278, 288, 26 L.Ed. 1090; City of Clearwater v. State, 108 Fla. 623, 147 So. 459. These bondholders are by their contract entitled to have the bond taxes laid and paid according to the law in 1926, and if not paid to have a lien on the property assessed even after it has gone on tax-sale certificate into the hands of the state. Money paid in redemption of a tax sale is only a belated payment of the taxes. The Legislature has much discretionary power
Judgment affirmed.