454
Opinion of Breyer, J.
properly taken into account. Each of the features discussed above seems an odd or unusual feature of an income tax but an ordinary feature of a licensing fee. Taken together, these features show that the tax before us is so different from an ordinary income tax, and so much like a licensing fee, that for federal constitutional purposes I must conclude that Jefferson County has imposed an occupational or license tax— that is, a fee for obtaining a license to engage in official work—just as the county in its ordinance purports to do.
II
Jefferson County argues that, in any event, the United States has consented to the imposition of the tax. It points first to the Public Salary Tax Act of 1939, which grants federal consent "to the taxation of pay or compensation for personal service as an officer or employee of the United States . . . by a duly constituted taxing authority." 4 U. S. C. § 111. This statute cannot help Jefferson County, however, because in Graves, this Court held only that the intergovernmental tax immunity doctrine does not prevent a State from imposing a nondiscriminatory tax upon "the salaries of officers or employees of the national . . . government." 306 U. S., at 486. And the Public Salary Tax Act
"simply codified the result in Graves and foreclosed the possibility that subsequent judicial reconsideration of that case might reestablish the broader interpretation of the immunity doctrine." Davis v. Michigan Dept. of Treasury, 489 U. S. 803, 812 (1989).
See also id., at 811-812 ("[D]uring most of the legislative process leading to adoption of the Act it was unclear whether state taxation of federal employees was still barred by inter-governmental tax immunity"); H. R. Rep. No. 26, 76th Cong., 1st Sess., 2 (1939). If Jefferson County's tax is not an income tax and hence falls outside the scope of Graves, this statute cannot save it.
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