Opinion of SCALIA, J. join respondents from performing their duties rather than suits to collect the unpaid "license fee." But even in the present suits, which do not qualify for removal, respondents could argue that this is a charge prohibited by the intergovernmental tax immunity doctrine. Deciding that the cases were improperly removed would simply mean that that defense would have to be made in state court. For although the removal statute creates an exception to the wellpleaded-complaint doctrine, the exception is not for all federal-question defenses asserted by federal officials, but rather for all suits "for any act under color of office or in the performance of [official] duties." It is enough for the Court that respondents have identified some connection, albeit remote, with their federal offices. See ibid. The majority says that all the circumstances giving rise to these suits must be considered, and "those circumstances encompass holding court in the county and receiving income for that activity." Ante, at 433. In other words, but for the judges' working—an act unquestionably within the scope of their official duties-they would not have owed taxes under Ordinance No. 1120 and thus would not have been sued. "But for" causation, however, is not enough. In Maryland v. Soper (No. 2), 270 U. S. 36 (1926), four prohibition agents and their chauffeur were prosecuted in state court for lying under oath to the state coroner, and they sought to remove the case under a predecessor of the current federal-officer removal statute.2 According to the 2 Section 33 of the Judicial Code provided: "That when any civil suit or criminal prosecution is commenced in any court of a State against any officer appointed under or acting by authority of any revenue law of the United States. . . or against any person acting under or by authority of any such officer, on account of any act done under color of his office... the said suit or prosecution may at any time before the trial or final hearing thereof be removed for trial into the district court next to be holden in the district where the same is pending . . . ." 39 Stat. 532, ch. 399. Opinion of SCALIA, J. agents, they were on their way to report to their superior about a freshly discovered illegal still when they came upon a mortally wounded man in the road. Had they not been en route to their superior, the agents argued, they would never have made the discovery that required them to testify before the coroner. We rejected the argument that this established a sufficient connection between their official duty and the obstruction-of-justice prosecution. Although reporting to their superior was certainly among their official duties, the act of testifying before the coroner was not, and it was the latter act "on account of" which (or in the terms of the current removal statute, "for" which) they were prosecuted. Id., at 42. So also here, it is not enough that respondents' performance of their judicial duties was a link in the chain of events that brought about these suits-that had they not performed their official duties, the fee would not have been assessed, and had the fee not been assessed they would not have been sued for failure to pay it. Acker and Clemon were sued for their refusal to pay the tax-and that, as I have said, is not an act required by, or even performed in connection with, cf. Willingham v. Morgan, 395 U. S. 402 (1969), the duties of their judicial office. None of this is to suggest, of course, that removal is justified only when the federal officer can prove that the act prompting suit is, beyond doubt, an official one. If that were the case, the merits truly would be subsumed within the jurisdictional question of removal; the defense of qualified immunity, for example, would always be resolved as a threshold jurisdictional question-an odd result when the main point of 28 U.S. C. § 1443 is to give officers a federal forum in which to litigate the merits of immunity defenses. See Willingham v. Morgan, supra, at 407. The point is only that the officer should have to identify as the gravamen of the suit an act that was, if not required by, at least closely connected with, the performance of his official functions. 28 Opinion of BREYER, J. U. S. C. §1443; Maryland v. Soper (No. 1), 270 U. S. 9, 33 (1926); Willingham v. Morgan, supra, at 407-409. What should defeat respondents here is that even though their federal defense is colorable, their claim to have acted in official capacity in not paying the fee is not. * For the foregoing reasons, I would hold that this case was improperly removed. In view, however, of the decision of a majority of the Court to reach the merits, I join Parts I, III, and IV of the Court's opinion. Cf. Edgar v. MITE Corp., 457 U. S. 624, 646 (1982) (Powell, J., concurring in part); United States v. Jorn, 400 U. S. 470, 488 (1971) (Black, J., concurring in judgment). JUSTICE BREYER, with whom JUSTICE O'CONNOR joins, concurring in part and dissenting in part. I agree that we have jurisdiction to hear the merits of this case, and I join Parts I, II, and III of the Court's opinion. I do not agree with the majority, however, about the constitutionality of the tax. If Jefferson County's license fee amounts to a tax imposed directly upon a federal official's performance of his official duties, it runs afoul of the intergovernmental tax immunity doctrine. See United States v. New Mexico, 455 U. S. 720, 733 (1982) (“[A] State may not, consistent with the Supremacy Clause, U. S. Const., Art. VI, cl. 2, lay a tax ‘directly upon the United States'" (citation omitted)); James v. Dravo Contracting Co., 302 U. S. 134, 157 (1937); e. g., Leslie Miller, Inc. v. Arkansas, 352 U. S. 187, 190 (1956) (per curiam) (“[I]mmunity" of federal ""instruments"" from state control in performance of duties extends to state requirement that "they desist from performance'" until they take an examination to satisfy the State "that they are competent" and "pay a fee for permission to go on'") (quoting Johnson v. Maryland, 254 U. S. 51, 57 (1920)). On the other Opinion of BREYER, J. hand, if Jefferson County's license fee amounts to an income tax, there is no constitutional problem. See Graves v. New York ex rel. O'Keefe, 306 U. S. 466, 486 (1939); Public Salary Tax Act of 1939, 4 U. S. C. § 111. The question here is whether Jefferson County's license fee is a fee for the performance of official federal duties or, rather, whether it is an income tax on federal employees. In my view, it is the former. I I concede that Jefferson County measures the amount of its tax by taking a small percentage of the "gross receipts" or income derived from the licensed activity. Jefferson County Ordinance No. 1120, § 1(F) (1987). The way in which a State measures a tax, however, is only one relevant feature. A state law, for example, that imposed fines upon all appellate judges who took too long in issuing decisions, cf. Cal. Govt. Code Ann. § 68210 (West 1997) (salary withheld from tardy judges), would not suddenly become an "income tax" if the State began to measure the tax or fine, say, in terms of a small percentage of the judge's federal income tax liability. Nor would a similar tax imposed upon a judge each time he administers an official oath automatically become an "income tax." Neither would a driver's license fee or a motor vehicle license fee become an "income tax" should imaginative state legislators make the fees "progressive" by devising some similar system of measurement. Consequently, one must look beyond that single feature of measurement in order to determine the nature of the tax as it operates in practice. Cf. Lawrence v. State Tax Comm'n of Miss., 286 U. S. 276, 280 (1932). And four specific features of this rather unusual tax, taken together, convince me that it is not an "income tax." First, the language, structure, and purpose of the ordinance indicate that it imposes a fee upon the performance of work, not a tax upon income. The ordinance is entitled "Occupational Tax." It describes its purpose as establishing Opinion of BREYER, J. a "license. . . tax" or a "tax" on the "privilege" of engaging in a “vocation, occupation, calling or profession." Ordinance No. 1120, preamble. And its operative language speaks in terms of a condition imposed upon work, not of a tax upon income. It says that it "shall be unlawful for any person to engage in or follow 99 The state law that authorizes the county's tax describes its own purpose as one of "equaliz[ing] the burden of taxation," and it authorizes the county "to levy a license or privilege tax upon any person for engaging in any business" other than a business already subject to other state or county licensing fees, liability for which is triggered, not by income, but by engaging in the work. See 1967 Ala. Acts 406, §§3, 4; see generally Appendix, infra, at 458-464. Indeed, the Alabama Supreme Court has found as a matter of state law that a municipal tax very similar in substance to Jefferson County's tax was an occupational license tax, rather than an income tax. See McPheeter v. Auburn, 288 Ala. 286, 292, 259 So. 2d 833, 837 (1972). Second, the tax, as measured, works more like a licensing fee than an income tax. On the one hand, the tax calculation does not include many kinds of income, such as retirement income, dividends, interest, or other unearned income, or earned income if that income is earned outside the county-irrespective of how much income is involved. See Ordinance No. 1120, § 1(F). On the other hand, by the terms of the ordinance, not only a county resident but also a nonresident who works some of the time in Jefferson County, §§ 1(B), 3, must pay the tax as long as he becomes "entitled to receive" pay for his work, even if he receives that pay |