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WAGNON v. PRAIRIE BAND POTAWATOMI NATION Opinion of the Court

from placing the legal incidence of an excise tax “on a tribe or on tribal members for sales made inside Indian country” without congressional authorization, id., at 459 (emphasis added). We have further determined that, even when a State imposes the legal incidence of its tax on a non-Indian seller, the tax may nonetheless be pre-empted if the trans­ action giving rise to tax liability occurs on the reservation and the imposition of the tax fails to satisfy the Bracker interest-balancing test. See 448 U. S. 136 (holding that state taxes imposed on on-reservation logging and hauling operations by non-Indian contractor are invalid under the interest-balancing test); cf. Central Machinery Co. v. Ari­ zona Tax Comm’n, 448 U. S. 160 (1980) (holding that the Indian trader statutes pre-empted Arizona’s tax on a nonIndian seller’s on-reservation sales). The Nation maintains that it is entitled to prevail under the categorical bar articulated in Chickasaw because “[t]he fairest reading of the statute is that the legal incidence of the tax actually falls on the Tribe [on the reservation].” Brief for Respondent 17, n. 5. The Nation alternatively maintains it is entitled to prevail even if the legal incidence of the tax is on the non-Indian distributor because, according to the Nation, the tax arises out of a distributor’s on­ reservation transaction with the Tribe and is therefore sub­ ject to the Bracker balancing test. Brief for Respondent 15. We address the “who” and the “where” of Kansas’ motor fuel tax in turn. A Kansas law speciﬁes that “the incidence of [the motor fuel] tax is imposed on the distributor of the ﬁrst receipt of the motor fuel.” Kan. Stat. Ann. § 79–3408(c) (2003 Cum. Supp.). We have suggested that such “dispositive language” from the state legislature is determinative of who bears the legal incidence of a state excise tax. Chickasaw, supra, at 461. But even if the state legislature had not employed such “dispositive language,” thereby requiring us instead to look