Cite as: 523 U. S. 696 (1998)
Opinion of the Court
. . . two sovereigns[—State and Tribe—]has taxing jurisdiction over all [on-reservation production]." Id., at 189.
The Court in Cotton Petroleum distinguished Crow II in a footnote referring to the Solicitor General's representation that Montana's taxes were "extraordinarily high" and the Ninth Circuit's recognition that "the state taxes had a negative effect on the marketability of coal produced in Montana." 490 U. S., at 186-187, n. 17. Montana, Cotton Petroleum thus indicates, had the power to tax Crow coal, but not at an exorbitant rate. See id., at 187, n. 17 (according to the Tribe's expert, Montana's rate was " 'more than twice that of any other state's coal taxes' ").15 We examine the Tribe's disgorgement claim in light of Cotton Petroleum, a decision on the books before the Tribe (and the United States) filed their current claims for restitution.
B
We consider first the argument that the Tribe, not Montana, should have received Westmoreland's 1975-1982 coal tax payments; therefore the proper remedy is to require the State to turn all taxes it collected from Westmoreland over to the Tribe. As authority, the Tribe and the United States rely on cases typified by Valley County v. Thomas, 109 Mont. 345, 97 P. 2d 345 (1939). That case involved a Montana law providing for the licensing of motor vehicles by the county in which the vehicle is owned and taxable. Valley County claimed that McCone County was unlawfully issuing licenses, and collecting license fees, for vehicles owned and taxable within Valley County. Valley sued McCone for both injunctive and monetary relief. The Montana Supreme Court held that if Montana's vehicle licensing law made Valley, not Mc-Cone, the county entitled to issue the licenses in question,
15 Since 1985, the District Court observed, "the Montana legislature has enacted production incentive credits and incrementally reduced the amount of the severance tax"; in November 1994, the rate was 15 percent of the contract sales price. App. to Pet. for Cert. 25.
715
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