Court Opinion

ID: 9532671
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:23:50.742225+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:28:48.417706
License: Public Domain

On Rehearing
BROWN, Justice.
The appellee in its application for rehearing correctly construes the opinion as holding that the amount of its gross sales for the preceding year is by the stat*540ute made the basis for computing the tax, such gross sales including all sales, — those made in quantities of less than twenty-five gallons as well as those in quantities of more than twenty-five gallons. •
The provision of the statute is that such taxpayer “shall pay to the department of revenue for the usé of the state, within two weeks from the beginning of the fiscal year, the sum of one half of one percent on lids gross sales for the preceding fiscal year, and such payment to the department of revenue shall he accompanied by a sworn statement verified by the person having knowledge of the facts showing the amount of the gross sales of such oils sold in the state during the preceding fiscal year.” Code 1940, Tit. 51, § 634. [Italics supplied.]
This is the only basis fixed by the statute for computing the tax and there can be and is no doubt as to what it means. For the court to substitute any other basis for such computation would be judicial legislation, not judicial interpretation.
The legislature in enacting the statute had in mind big distributors of such oils, such as appellee, and in levying the tax on the privilege of engaging in business in this state used the terms “that is to say in quantities of twenty-five gallons or more” in setting up a constitutional classification, distinguishing the “proprietors of larger businesses who are taxed and the proprietors of smaller businesses who are not.” Carmichael, Attorney General of Alabama, et al. v. Southern Coal & Coke Co., 301 U.S. 495, 57 S.Ct. 868, 873, 81 L.Ed. 1245. And as observed in that case, “Yet, this is the type of distinction which the law is often called upon to make. It is only a difference in numbers which marks the moment when day ends and night begins, when the disabilities of infancy terminate and the status of legal competency is assumed. It separates large incomes which are taxed from the smaller ones which are exempt, as it marks here the difference between the proprietors of larger businesses who are taxed and the proprietors of smaller businesses who are not.” 301 U.S. 510-511, 57 S.Ct. 873, 81 L.Ed. 1245.
Yet is is suggested here that the little filling station operator sometimes sells more than twenty-five gallons in one lot. He is not taxed by this statute. He operates under the sales tax act and purchases at wholesale for resale to the consumer, who is taxed, and the seller collects the tax from him and accounts to the state therefore. Texas Co. v. Harold, 228 Ala. 350, 153 So. 442, 92 A.L.R. 523. In such instances the tax is fixed on the gallonage basis. But under the provisions of § 634, Title 51, Code of 1940, the basis of computation is the gross sales for the preceding year. All such sales are wholesale sales, and that is what the court said in Pure Oil Co. v. State, 244 Ala. 258, 12 So.2d 861, 148 A.L.R. 260. In short, the statute levies the tax against the person for the privilege of engaging in the business of a wholesaler and the tax is exacted as the quid pro quo for the protection given by law to the taxpayer in the conduct of such business.
The application for rehearing is without merit and will be overruled.
Application for rehearing overruled.
LIVINGSTON, C. J., and FOSTER and SIMPSON, JJ., concur.