Opinion
May 22, 1951.
Appeal from the Circuit Court, Leon County, Hugh M. Taylor, J.
Richard W. Ervin, Atty. Gen., and Howard S. Bailey, Asst. Atty. Gen., for appellant.
Bezoni Ervin, Tallahassee, for appellee.
The appellee filed a bill, 24 March 1950, for a declaratory decree seeking specifically a mandatory injunction requiring the appellant to issue to it a certificate of authority to do business in Florida during that year. It was alleged that the insurance commissioner had demanded of appellee the sum of approximately $4,000, representing one per cent of the gross receipts of premiums on policies executed by the insurance company the preceding year, 1949, covering properties within various municipalities, presumably as a prerequisite to its continuing business in the state. This amount was deposited by the appellee in the registry of the court.
The chancellor decided that the appellee was not liable for the tax, and ordered the deposit returned to it.
Chapter 175, Florida Statutes, 1949, and F.S.A., provides for the creation of firemen's relief and pension funds in various cities under conditions and circumstances not necessary to detail. Under Section .05 of that Chapter, passed as Chapter 19112, Laws of Florida, Acts of 1939, a city having such a fund may impose on insurers against loss by fire or tornado "* * * an excise or license tax in addition to any lawful license or excise tax now levied * * *" amounting to one per cent of the gross premiums for policies covering property in the municipality, to be payable on 1 March of each year. The insurers are entitled to a credit on similar taxes payable to the state for the amount thus paid to the city. There follows the proviso: "* * * this chapter shall not be construed to require the payment of an excise tax by any insurance company that does not now pay such tax." (Italics supplied.)
At this point, then, it is perfectly clear that a city qualifying under the act was empowered to tax the insurance company one per cent of the premiums on the policies it executed on property in that city, and that the company was obligated to the state for the difference between the state tax and the sum paid to the city; but a company not taxable by the state was free from taxation by the city.
A tax of two per cent on premiums is exacted by the state under Section 205.43, Florida Statutes, 1949, and F.S.A., and prior to 1945 domestic corporations, such as appellee, were exempt; hence at the time of the enactment of Chapter 19112, supra, in 1939, and until the passage of the act which we shall next discuss, in 1945, insurers in this classification were not required to pay a tax either to the city or the state.
In that year the original law was amended by Chapter 22671 so that the exemption provision relating to domestic corporations was eliminated, but the proviso we have quoted was retained by the express language that nothing in the amendatory act should be construed as repealing Section 175.05, supra. We construe this action on the part of the legislature to have meant that, beginning in 1945, when it became effective, domestic corporations writing insurance were responsible both to the state and to the city for tax on premiums. This situation obtained until 1949, when the legislature, by enacting Chapter 25344, again relieved insurers organized under the laws of Florida from paying the tax on insurance premiums theretofore levied under Section 205.43, supra. The exemption applied to the calendar year 1949 and subsequent years.
It will be recalled that the present controversy involves the premiums received by the appellee for the year 1949, which would have been, under Chapter 22671, due on the first day of March, 1950.
The appellant poses the question whether the amendment of 1945 removing the exemption of domestic corporations also, by implication, eliminated the proviso in the original Firemen's Relief and Pension Fund Act. We think it did not. By its very terms, the intention of the legislature not to do that was declared. We gather that it was purposely left in the law so that any insurer that might from time to time be relieved from the payment of the state tax would automatically be freed also from any levy by a municipality.
We cannot say that because at the time of the amendment of 205.43 there may have been no exemptions, the proviso had lost its usefulness to the extent that it was repealed, by implication, when the legislature clearly expressed itself to the contrary. There is no need to indulge in implications when clear expressions are present. The word "now" ordinarily means "at the present time" or "at the moment," and could quite properly, as used in Chapter 19112, have referred to a condition existing at the time of the passage of that act. But the word may by its use come to mean a "`time contemporaneous with something done'." State ex rel. v. Mayor and Com'rs of City of Lawrence, 101 Kan. 225, 165 P. 826. We think the legislature, by preserving the proviso in Chapter 22671, and by re-enacting in 1947, Chapter 24337, F.S.A. § 16.19 et seq., and again in 1949, Chapter 25035, F.S.A. § 16.19 et seq. the compilation titled "Florida Statutes, 1941," which included Section 175.05 and the proviso intact, gave to the word "now" an ambulatory meaning. It should be read as "now or hereafter" and denotes the moment when, from time to time, the act is read and applied.
The appellee is not now paying taxes to the State because of the exemption provided in the latest act, and it therefore is not required to pay any tax on premiums in the various municipalities qualifying under Chapter 175, supra.
We are convinced that the chancellor ruled correctly in ordering the money on deposit in the court returned to the appellee.
Affirmed.
SEBRING, C.J., and TERRELL and BARNS, JJ., concur.