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e purpose of the government not to interfere * * * with the trade nominally licensed, if the required taxes are paid." Whether the "licensed" trade shall be permitted at all is a question for decision by the State.[261] This, nevertheless, does not signify that Congress may not often regulate to some extent a business within a State in order the more effectively to tax it. Under the necessary and proper clause, Congress may do this very thing. Not only has the Court sustained regulations concerning the packaging of taxed articles such as tobacco[262] and oleomargarine,[263] ostensibly designed to prevent fraud in the collection of the tax; it has also upheld measures taxing drugs[264] and firearms[265] which prescribed rigorous restrictions under which such articles could be sold or transferred, and imposed heavy penalties upon persons dealing with them in any other way. These regulations were sustained as conducive to the efficient collection of the tax though they clearly transcended in some respects this ground of justification. Extermination by Taxation A problem of a different order is presented where the tax itself has the effect of suppressing an activity or where it is coupled with regulations which clearly have no possible relation to the collection of the tax. Where a tax is imposed unconditionally, so that no other purpose appears on the face of the statute, the Court has refused to inquire into the motives of the lawmakers and has sustained the tax despite its prohibitive proportions.[266] In the language of a recent opinion: "It is beyond serious question that a tax does not cease to be valid merely because it regulates, discourages, or even definitely deters the activities taxed. * * * The principle applies even though the revenue obtained is obviously negligible, * * *, or the revenue purpose of the tax may be secondary, * * * Nor does a tax statute necessarily fall because it touches on activities which Congress might not otherwise regulate. As was pointed out in Magnano Co. _v._ Hamilton, 292 U.S. 40, 47 (1934): 'From the beginning of our government, the courts have sustained taxes although imposed with the collateral intent of effecting ulterior ends which, considered apart, were beyond the constitutional power of the lawmakers to realize by legislation directly addressed to their accomplishment.'"[267] But where the tax is conditional, and may be avoided by compliance with regulations set out in
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