TAXING POWER OF THE STATES
"Any claim that this statute is a taxing statute would be immediately open to severe Constitutional objections. If it could be said that the state had the power to tax a Right, this would enable the state to destroy Rights guaranteed by the constitution through the use of oppressive taxation. The question herein is one of the state taxing the Right to travel by the ordinary modes of the day, and whether this is a legislative object of the state taxation.
The views advanced herein are neither novel nor unsupported by authority. The question of the taxing power of the states has been repeatedly considered by the Supreme Court. The Right of the state to impede or embarrass the Constitutional operation of the U.S. Government or the Rights which the Citizen holds under it has been uniformly denied."
McCulloch vs. Maryland, 4 Wheat 316
The power to tax is the power to destroy, and if the state is given the power to destroy Rights through taxation, the framers of the Constitution wrote that document in vain.
"... It may be said that a tax of one dollar for passing through the state cannot sensibly affect any function of government or deprive a Citizen of any valuable Right. But if a state can tax ... a passenger of one dollar, it can tax him a thousand dollars."
Crandall vs. Nevada, 6 Wall 35, 46
and ...
"If the Right of passing through a state by a Citizen of the United States is one guaranteed by the Constitution, it must be sacred from state taxation."
Ibid., Pg. 47
Therefore, the Right of travel must be kept sacred from all forms of state taxation and if this argument is used by the state as a defense of the enforcement of this statute, then this argument also must fail.