Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/313/117/
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 10:17:13+00:00

Document:
A statute of Virginia imposes an annual fee of $100 for each vehicle used in the business of peddling goods, wares, or merchandise "by selling and delivering the same at the same time to licensed dealers or retailers at other than a definite place of business operated by the seller." The statute exempts manufacturers taxable by the State on capital, distributors of manufactured goods paying a state license tax on their purchases, and wholesale dealers regularly licensed by the State.
Held: as applied to a foreign corporation which had its principal office and place of business outside of the State and whose delivers brought into the State bread which they there sold and delivered to regular customers -- not in contravention of the commerce clause or the equal protection clause of the Federal Constitution. P. 313 U. S. 119.
176 Va. 170, 10 S.E.2d 535, affirmed.
Appeal from the affirmance of a conviction for violation of a state license tax statute.
Virginia business. It makes bread which it sells to grocers and other retailers in territory adjacent to Martinsburg, including Winchester and other places in Virginia. Appellant's trucks carry the bread into Virginia where they serve regular routes at regular intervals. The drivers call only on regular customers, inquire of each how much bread he needs and, in response to his order, take it from the truck and deliver it to the customer. Thus, each such transaction in Virginia is a sale and delivery in that State to a regular customer.
The company has no property permanently located in Virginia, and no place of business in the State except that, as required by the statute respecting registered foreign corporations, it maintains an office in the State where claims against it may be audited, settled, and paid.
The annual fee is $100 for each vehicle used in the business.
In the State courts and here, the appellant challenged the statute as contravening the commerce clause and the equal protection clause of the Federal Constitution. Its position is that it is doing either an interstate business, which the State may not burden by imposing a license tax, or an intrastate business, as to which the exaction works a forbidden discrimination. We hold both contentions untenable.
§ 192b, such peddlers would be the only vendors in Virginia to escape some form of taxation.
Peddlers at wholesale are not entitled to be licensed and taxed on the same basis as other vendors, as respects either form or amount. As we have repeatedly held, the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment does not prevent a state from classifying businesses for taxation, or impose any iron rule of equality. [Footnote 10] Some occupations may be taxed though others are not. Some may be taxed at one rate, others at a different rate. Classification is not discrimination. It is enough that those in the same class are treated with equality. That is true here.
Acts of Virginia, 1932, p. 376, 1938, p. 440; Va.Tax Code, 1936, § 192b, Michie, p. 2458, 1940 Supp. 472.
176 Va. 170, 10 S.E.2d 535.
Howe Machine Co. v. Gage, 100 U. S. 676; Ement v. Missouri, 156 U. S. 296; Wagner v. Covington, 251 U. S. 95, 251 U. S. 104.
Armour & Co. v. Virginia, 246 U. S. 1, and cases therein cited.
Tax Code of Virginia, 1936, §§ 73, 188, Va.Code, 1936, Michie, Appendix, pp. 2416, 2451.
Tax Code of Virginia, § 188, Va.Code, 1936, Michie, pp. 2451, 2452.
Id. § 192, Va.Code, 1936, Michie, p. 2457.
State Board of Tax Commissioners v. Jackson, 283 U. S. 527, 283 U. S. 537, and cases cited.

References: § 192
 § 192
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 § 188
 § 192
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