City of De Pere v. Public Service Commission

Respondent, city of De Pere, assumes that the charge in question of $1.25 a front foot imposed, in addition to a tapping charge, upon all property owners desiring to make new connections to a main for which they have not paid or for which they have not paid a special assessment, is a tax or an assessment. “Taxes,” it was said in Fitch v. Wisconsin Tax Comm. 201 Wis. 383, 387, 230 N. W. 37, “are the enforced proportional contributions from persons and property, levied by the state by virtue of its sovereignty for the support of government and for all public needs. The state demands and…