Opinion ID: 1137001
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Governmental Immunity from Taxation

Text: In Dickinson v. City of Tallahassee, 325 So.2d 1 (Fla.1975), this Court addressed the concept of intergovernmental taxation. The City of Tallahassee attempted to impose a utility tax upon the State of Florida and its agencies and departments, on Leon County, and on the Leon County School Board. Id. at 2. We rejected such an effort. We stated that [p]recedent and logic both dictate that the sovereign's general freedom from taxation derives from an `immunity', not from an `exemption'. Id. at 3. We then quoted with approval the observation that [t]he state and its political subdivisions, like a county, are immune from taxation since there is no power to tax them. Id. The core policy rationale underlying this decision was that broad grounds of fundamentals in government dictate against governmental entities taxing each other when, instead, those entities should be cooperating to further the public interest. Id. We therefore found that the State, counties, and school districts were expressly immune from taxation. No special district was a party in the Dickinson case. The Department of Revenue and Brevard County now suggest, twenty-one years later, that the reasoning of Dickinson does not extend to special districts. They argue that special districts are not like a county and, therefore, do not represent a political subdivision of the State immune from taxation. Our constitution refutes this assertion.