Cite as: 511 U. S. 93 (1994)
Opinion of the Court
interstate commerce the rough equivalent of an identifiable and "substantially similar" tax on intrastate commerce does not offend the negative Commerce Clause. Maryland, supra, at 758-759. See also Tyler Pipe Industries, Inc. v. Washington State Dept. of Revenue, 483 U. S. 232, 242-243 (1987); Armco, 467 U. S., at 643.
To justify a charge on interstate commerce as a compensatory tax, a State must, as a threshold matter, "identif[y] . . . the [intrastate tax] burden for which the State is attempting to compensate." Maryland, supra, at 758. Once that burden has been identified, the tax on interstate commerce must be shown roughly to approximate—but not exceed— the amount of the tax on intrastate commerce. See, e. g., Alaska v. Arctic Maid, 366 U. S. 199, 204-205 (1961). Finally, the events on which the interstate and intrastate taxes are imposed must be "substantially equivalent"; that is, they must be sufficiently similar in substance to serve as mutually exclusive "prox[ies]" for each other. Armco, supra, at 643. As Justice Cardozo explained for the Court in Henneford, under a truly compensatory tax scheme "the stranger from afar is subject to no greater burdens as a consequence of ownership than the dweller within the gates. The one pays upon one activity or incident, and the other upon another, but the sum is the same when the reckoning is closed." 300 U. S., at 584.6
6 The Oregon Supreme Court, though terming the out-of-state surcharge a "compensatory fee," relied for its legal standard on our "user fee" cases. See 316 Ore. 99, 112, 849 P. 2d 500, 508 (1993) (citing, for example, Evansville-Vanderburgh Airport Authority Dist. v. Delta Airlines, Inc., 405 U. S. 707 (1972), and Clark v. Paul Gray, Inc., 306 U. S. 583 (1939)). The compensatory tax cases cited in the text, rather than the user fee cases, are controlling here, as the latter apply only to "charge[s] imposed by the State for the use of state-owned or state-provided transportation or other facilities and services." Commonwealth Edison Co. v. Montana, 453 U. S. 609, 621 (1981). Because it is undisputed that, as in Chemical Waste, the landfills in question are owned by private entities, including Oregon Waste, the out-of-state surcharge is plainly not a user fee. Nev-
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