Under business taxes are included the general propery lax modified in administrative details to suit the special conditions of business, the ordinary occupation taxes, and the special occupation taxes.

At the close of the Reconstruction period a somewhat centralized method existed of taxing by the general property tax the property of railroad and telegraph companies. Their property was required to be rendered to the justice of the peace of the precinct where the principal office was located, and the lists were then forwarded to the comptroller for his approval or disapproval. Incorporated cities and towns certified their tax rates to the comptroller, and the taxes might be paid to him, though payment to him was not mandatory.1 The Constitution of 1876 reversed this modified employment of the unit method of assessment, and provided that such corporate property should be assessed and the taxes collected in the several counties where it was situated.2 Exceptions to this rule were and are (1) that the property of railroad, telegraph, plank road and turnpike companies in unorganized counties shall be assessed and the taxes thereon collected at the comptroller's office, and (2) that the rolling stock of a railroad company shall be assessed in gross in the county where the principal office is located and the value so assessed shall be apportioned by the comptroller among the counties on the basis of the proportion of the mileage of the road in each county to the total mileage of the road in the state, the taxes being collected by the county collectors. A wholly decentralized method of taxing these complicated properties was thus fastened upon the state, and the results compare unfavorably with those under the preceding method.3

1 Act of April 30, 1874; Laws of 1874, p. 175.

2 Art. 8, sec. 8.

3 Act of August 21, 1876; Laws of 1876, p. 275.

Banking was the other business for which special rules of assessment were laid down. Under the Constitution of 1869 state banks could be incorporated, but the Constitution of 1876 returned to the policy which prevailed from 1846 to 1870 of prohibiting the establishment of state banks. National banks, private banks, and state banks chartered between 1870 and 1876 were the banking institutions in the state. They were taxed on their real property, tangible personalty, money, credits and securities, less deposits, accounts payable, and such bonds or other securities as were exempt by national or state laws. The shares of stock of national banks in the state were taxable to the holder.

Occupation taxes were of two kinds; namely, what may be called ordinary, or general, and special. The Constitution of 1876 empowered the legislature to impose occupation taxes, except upon persons engaged in mechanical and agricultural pursuits, but all such taxes had to be equal and uniform upon the same class of subjects within the limits of the authority levying the tax.1 The occupations which were taxed were numerous, but they were the same in general as those taxed in 1873. Occupations called useful as well as those which popu-larly are not so considered were taxed. Those on merchants' and on liquor dealers were the important taxes which were heavily increased.2 In some instances the taxes were intended to be prohibitive, as, for example, those of $1,000 on nine or ten-pin alleys and of $200 on fortune tellers. The taxes on merchants were roughly classified according to the amounts of purchases, and in the case of a number of occupations, such as photography, and dealing in stocks and bonds, classification was based on population of the town or city. The rates which counties, cities and towns could levy were limited by the constitution and the statutes to not more than one-half of the state-rate, but in the case of some occupations, as for example, lightning rod dealers and sewing machine dealers, the rates were specified.

1 Art. 8, secs. 1 and 2.

2 The taxes imposed on retail liquor dealers by the acts of 1873 and 1876 were upheld as constitutional in Harris v. State, 4 Tex. Crim. App., 131. The tax on lawyers, was upheld in Lanquille v. State, 4 Tex. Crim. App., 312 (1878). See also ex-parte Williams, 18 5ex. Crim. App.,. 262 (1892).

The occupation tax measure which is the most celebrated of any in the annals of the state was passed in this period. It has gone down in history as the Bell Punch Law, and applied to the sale of liquors. According to it, all dealers in spirituous, vinous, and malt liquors in quantities less than a quart were required to pay a specific occupation tax of $250 per annum, when only malt liquors were sold a tax of $25, and a tax of two cents on each drink except malt, for which the tax was one-half cent, sold or drunk on the licensor's premises. The seller was required to have two registers, one marked "Alcoholic," the other "Malt," and each register was provided with a bell which was struck at each revolution of the crank, and with a device which registered upon the face of the machine the number of revolutions of the crank. The registers were furnished by the state at $10 each. The sale of each drink had to be registered in the presence of the purchaser, and it was unlawful, and punishable by a fine, for any person to pay for a drink until it had been registered. Penalties were prescribed also for failure to pay the tax, for failure to turn the crank, for any willful injury to the register, for any counterfeiting of the register, and so on. The tax collector visited each licensor once a month and collected the tax. One-third of the net collections in each county accrued to the county. Incorporated cities and towns could levy a tax of one-fourth of one cent on spirituous and vinous, and one-eighth of one cent on malt, drinks sold.1 The law proved to be a failure and was repealed in 1881.

Another celebrated occupation tax enacted in 1879 was the drummers' tax. It amounted to $200, but it was not imposed on those soliciting for houses which had paid the merchants' occupation tax of $200, an exception which obviously worked an injustice on the smaller houses. This tax, in so far as it applied to citizens of other states, was declared an unconstitutional interference with interstate commerce.1

1 Act of April 3, 1879; Laws of 1879, p. 71. The idea of this tax appears to have been borrowed from Virginia; message of Governor Roberts, January 21, 1879. Constitutionality upheld in Albrecht v. State, 8 Tex. Crim. App., 216 (1880).