City of Pittsburgh v. Allegheny Valley Bank

The result reached by Mr. Justice Roberts is a product of not seeing the forest through the trees. Today’s opinion of the Court correctly states that the state legislature intended to “exclusively occupy the state banking field.” At 1369, emphasis added. This observation, however, does not compel the conclusion that the legislature also intended to deprive municipalities of their statutory power to levy taxes applicable to all businesses within the municipality.1 The Pittsburgh Business Privilege Tax2 does not intrude upon the state’s exclusive domain of bank regulation, it merely *557requires…