Court Opinion

ID: 9832853
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 22:15:11.775976+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:43:54.063580
License: Public Domain

On Appellees’ Motion for Rehearing.
Appellees cite Sec. 5a of the Chain Store Tax Act, Vernon’s Ann.P.C. art. 111 Id, which imposes the tax on public utilities engaged in selling electric or gas appliances and equipment in connection with the business of selling electric current or gas to the public, and contend that such enactment shows the legislative intent to either impose the tax on any business selling such items, or the related items listed in Group 2; or to declare that electric and gas appliances and equipment, or the related items listed in Group 2, are not “building materials” within the meaning of these words as used in Section 5 of the Act. Neither contention is sustained.
By Section 5a the Legislature imposed a particular “utility merchandising service” tax applicable only to a utility business engaged in the sale of either electric current or gas to the public. The Act specifically limited the tax to utilities engaged in selling such merchandise in connection with the business of selling either electric current or gas, defining the business taxed as “utility merchandising service,” which classified such merchandising business for taxation purposes. Central Power & Light Co. v. State, Tex.Civ.App., 165 S.W.2d 920, 925, writ refused by the Supreme Court of Texas and certiorari denied by the Supreme Court of the United States. 63 S.Ct. 1033, 87 L.Ed. -. Under this view of the Act it is immaterial whether or not electric and gas appliances and equipment are “building materials” within the meaning of the term as used in Section 5 of the Act, which exempts a business engaged exclusively in the sale of building materials from the payment of the tax. Manifestly, the whole purpose of the Legislature in enacting Section 5a was to impose a tax on utilities selling such merchandise in connection with their primary business of selling electric current or gas.
Nor did the Legislature attempt to define by Section 5a what are “building materials,” or to declare that electric and gas appliances and equipment were not “building materials.” Such matter was entirely foreign to the matter dealt with in Section 5a, which was limited to the matter of *501imposing the chain store tax on “utility merchandising service,” or as held in the Central Power & Light case, supra, to “selling appliances in connection with the business of supplying electric current and other utility products by utility corporations.”
The motion for rehearing is overruled.
Overruled.