Request By:
Mr. James S. Secrest
Allen County Attorney
Courthouse
Box 35
Scottsville, Kentucky 42164
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
Your fiscal court desires to levy a motor vehicle license tax of $10 per auto for the purpose of providing an ambulance service to the county.
You advised them they could not do that. We agree.
Such a tax is not an occupational or license tax under § 181 of the Constitution and KRS 67.083. It is a tax [imposed for the privilege of using county roads] based upon police power, and the revenue therefrom cannot exceed the reasonable cost of policing county roads systems, including classifying, licensing, tagging and supervising vehicles and their drivers.
Johnson v. City of Paducah, 285 Ky. 294, 147 S.W.2d 721 (1941). Moreover such a tax may not under the guise of police power be imposed for revenue purposes.
City of Georgetown v. Morrison, Ky., 362 S.W.2d 289 (1962). As was said in
City of Newport v. French Bros. Bauer Co., 169 Ky. 174, 183 S.W. 532 (1916) 537, "The license fee upon vehicles, where the tax is levied in the exercise of the police powers of the state or municipality, must only be sufficient to compensate the city for the issue of the license, the necessary keeping of the records of such transactions, and the supervisory regulation over the subjects of the license. "
Finally, the question arises in this context as to whether the auto sticker tax is permissible for counties, even where it is designed to pay just the policing costs as outlined above. We had in the past 1 concluded in various opinions of this office that such tax is permissible as a police power under the authority of KRS 67.083 [Home Rule Statute]. However, in the Home Rule case of 1977 cited, the court rejected the statute as being so general and vague as to constitute a nullity, except as to those taxes authorized by § 181, Kentucky Constitution. That section permits counties to impose license or occupational taxes. However legislative implementation of the constitutional authority is necessary. The court is saying that KRS 67.083, for that narrow taxing purpose, is the implementing statute.
However, the auto sticker tax is not strictly a license or occupational tax as envisioned under § 181, Constitution, since it is not a tax on an occupation.
City of Henderson v. Lockett, 157 Ky. 366, 163 S.W. 199 (1914) 200.
The holding in Fiscal Court v. City of Louisville, is to the effect that powers held by a county through its fiscal court must be expressly delegated to it by the General Assembly. Thus while certain police powers may be inherent in the state, police powers to be held by the county generally must be delegated by express legislative acts. 16 Am.Jur.2d, Constitutional Law, §§ 259 and 274.
KRS 67.083, as amended in 1978, in subsection (2) provides that the fiscal court of any county is authorized to levy all taxes not in conflict with the constitution and statutes of this state now or hereafter enacted. Subsection (3)(t) of that statute provides that any fiscal court may enact ordinances and levy taxes in performance of the public function of providing for streets and roads, bridges, tunnels and related facilities, elimination of grade crossings, providing for parking facilities, and enforcement of traffic and parking regulations.
It is our opinion that KRS 67.083, as amended in 1978, is sufficient, as an expressly delegated power, to authorize any fiscal court in Kentucky to enact a motor vehicle sticker tax, provided that it is not designed as a revenue measure and meets the test of just providing the policing costs of roads traffic supervision as outlined above.
Footnotes
Footnotes
1 Prior to Fiscal Court, Etc. v. City of Louisville, Ky., 559 S.W.2d 478 (1977).