Cite as: 527 U. S. 423 (1999)
Opinion of the Court
duties of a federal office without local permission, and in fact does not endeavor to do so.11
We consider next the judges' argument that the wholesale exemption for those who hold another state or county license reveals the Ordinance's true character as a licensing scheme, not an income tax. If the tax were genuinely an income tax, they urge, those license holders would not be excluded, although they might be allowed to claim their other license fees as credits or deductions against the county tax. Alabama's enabling Act does not allow its counties to so provide; those otherwise subject to license or privilege taxes under
11 The shortcomings Justice Breyer identifies in his first three objections, post, at 449-452, are of a sort this Court routinely rejects as cause for federal curtailment of the taxing power of state and local governments. See Ohio Oil Co. v. Conway, 281 U. S. 146, 159 (1930). His fourth objection, post, at 452-453, speaks of burdens Jefferson County imposes directly on the Federal Government—obligations to withhold the tax, to make complicated calculations, to keep detailed records. Justice Breyer overlooks that it is the actual operation of the Ordinance—what is and not what might be—that counts in determining the merits of this case. See Detroit v. Murray Corp. of America, 355 U. S. 489, 492 (1958).
As a matter of undisputed fact, the burdens Justice Breyer posits are hypothetical, not real. As the parties stipulated, "[a]ll active judges of the Northern District of Alabama except [respondents] have paid the County Occupational Tax on differing percentages of their judicial salaries," but "neither the Administrative Office of the United States Courts nor any Article III judge in the Northern District of Alabama . . . has ever made an oath certifying the alleged amounts of a federal judge's salary earned within and without Jefferson County," and "[t]he Administrative Office . . . has never withheld County Occupational Tax from any federal judge or court employee." Jefferson County, 850 F. Supp., at 1549; see also 5 U. S. C. § 5520(a) (authorizing the Secretary of the Treasury to enter into tax withholding agreements with local taxing authorities). Should Jefferson County someday exceed constitutional limits in its enforcement endeavors, a federal court would no doubt conserve what is constitutional, in line with the severability clauses contained in the state law and county Ordinance. See 1967 Ala. Acts 406, § 8; Jefferson County Ordinance No. 1120, § 13 (1987).
441
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