TAXATION

The imposition of a tax; the act or process of imposing and levying a pecuniary charge or enforced contribution, ratable, or proportioned to value or some other standard, upon persons or property, by or on behalf of a government or one of its divisions or agencies, for the purpose of providing revenue for the maintenance and expenses of government The term “taxation,” both in common parlance and in the laws of the several states, has been ordinarily used, not to express the idea of the sovereign power which is exercised, but the exercise of that power for a particular purpose, viz., to raise a revenue for the general and ordinary expenses of the government, whether it be the state, county, town, or city government. But there is another class of expenses, also of a public nature, necessary to be provided for, peculiar to the local government of counties, cities, towns, and even smaller subdivisions, such as opening, trradinr, improving in yarious ways, and repairing, highways and streets, and constructing sewers in cities, and canals and ditches for the purpose of drainage in the country. They are generally of peculiar local benefit. These burdens have always, in every state, from its first settlement, been charged upon the localities benefited: and have been apportioned upon various principles; but, whatever principle of apportionment has been adopted, they have been known, both in the legislation and ordinary speech of the country, by the name of “assessments.” Assessments have also, very generally, if not always, been apportioned upon principles different from those adopted in “taxation,” in the ordinary sense of that term; and any one can see, upon a moment’s reflection, that the apportionment, to bear equally, and do substantial justice to all parties, must be made upon a different principle from that adopted in “taxation,” so called. Emery v. San Francisco Gas Co., 28 Cal.