Cite as: 505 U. S. 214 (1992)
Opinion of the Court
court's reading of cases in Pennsylvania and New York, see 160 Wis. 2d, at 82, 465 N. W. 2d, at 811-812 (citing United States Tobacco Co. v. Commonwealth, supra; Gillette Co. v. State Tax Comm'n, 56 App. Div. 2d 475, 393 N. Y. S. 2d 186 (1977), aff'd, 45 N. Y. 2d 846, 382 N. E. 2d 764 (1978)). See also Indiana Dept. of Revenue v. Kimberly-Clark Corp., 275 Ind. 378, 384, 416 N. E. 2d 1264, 1268 (1981). According to Wrigley, this would treat as "solicitation of orders" any activities that are "ordinary and necessary 'business activities' accompanying the solicitation process" or are "routinely associated with deploying a sales force to conduct the solicitation, so long as there is no office, plant, warehouse or inventory in the State." Brief for Respondent 9, 19-20; see also J. Hellerstein, State Taxation ¶ 6.11[2], p. 245 (1983) ("[S]olicitation ought to be held to embrace other normal incidents of activities of salesmen" or the "customary functions of sales representatives of out-of-state merchants"). We reject this "routinely-associated-with-solicitation" or "customarily-performed-by-salesmen" approach, since it converts a standard embracing only a particular activity ("solicitation") into a standard embracing all activities routinely conducted by those who engage in that particular activity ("salesmen"). If, moreover, the approach were to be applied (as respondent apparently intends) on an industry-by-industry basis, it would render the limitations of § 381(a) toothless, permitting "solicitation of orders" to be whatever a particular industry wants its salesmen to do.4
4 The dissent explicitly agrees with our rejection of the "ordinary and necessary" standard advocated by Wrigley. Post, at 236. It then proceeds, however, to adopt that very standard. It states that the test should be whether a given activity is one that "reasonable buyers would consider . . . to be a part of the solicitation itself and not a significant and independent service or component of value." Post, at 237. It is obvious that those activities that a reasonable buyer would consider "part of the solicitation itself" rather than an "independent service" are those that are customarily performed in connection with solicitation. Any doubt that this is what the dissent intends is removed by its later elaboration of its
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