Cite as: 527 U. S. 423 (1999)
Opinion of Breyer, J.
hand, if Jefferson County's license fee amounts to an income tax, there is no constitutional problem. See Graves v. New York ex rel. O'Keefe, 306 U. S. 466, 486 (1939); Public Salary Tax Act of 1939, 4 U. S. C. § 111. The question here is whether Jefferson County's license fee is a fee for the performance of official federal duties or, rather, whether it is an income tax on federal employees. In my view, it is the former.
I
I concede that Jefferson County measures the amount of its tax by taking a small percentage of the "gross receipts" or income derived from the licensed activity. Jefferson County Ordinance No. 1120, § 1(F) (1987). The way in which a State measures a tax, however, is only one relevant feature. A state law, for example, that imposed fines upon all appellate judges who took too long in issuing decisions, cf. Cal. Govt. Code Ann. § 68210 (West 1997) (salary withheld from tardy judges), would not suddenly become an "income tax" if the State began to measure the tax or fine, say, in terms of a small percentage of the judge's federal income tax liability. Nor would a similar tax imposed upon a judge each time he administers an official oath automatically become an "income tax." Neither would a driver's license fee or a motor vehicle license fee become an "income tax" should imaginative state legislators make the fees "progressive" by devising some similar system of measurement. Consequently, one must look beyond that single feature of measurement in order to determine the nature of the tax as it operates in practice. Cf. Lawrence v. State Tax Comm'n of Miss., 286 U. S. 276, 280 (1932). And four specific features of this rather unusual tax, taken together, convince me that it is not an "income tax."
First, the language, structure, and purpose of the ordinance indicate that it imposes a fee upon the performance of work, not a tax upon income. The ordinance is entitled "Occupational Tax." It describes its purpose as establishing
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