Cite as: 512 U. S. 298 (1994)
Opinion of the Court
rejected this version of the treaty, 124 Cong. Rec. 18670 (1978), and ultimately ratified the agreement, id., at 19076, "subject to the reservation that the provisions of [Article 9(4)] . . . shall not apply to any political subdivision or local authority of the United States," id., at 18416. The final version of the treaty prohibited state tax discrimination against British nationals, Art. 2(4), 31 U. S. T. 5671; Art. 24, id., at 5687-5688,27 but did not require States to use separate accounting or water's edge apportionment of income, id., at 5709.
Given these indicia of Congress' willingness to tolerate States' worldwide combined reporting mandates, even when those mandates are applied to foreign corporations and domestic corporations with foreign parents, we cannot conclude that "the foreign policy of the United States—whose nuances . . . are much more the province of the Executive Branch and Congress than of this Court—is [so] seriously threatened," Container Corp., 463 U. S., at 196, by California's practice as to warrant our intervention.28 For this reason, Barclays' and its amici's argument that California's worldwide combined reporting requirement is unconstitutional because it is
27 Article 2(4) provides: "For the purpose of Article 24 (Non-discrimination), this Convention shall also apply to taxes of every kind and description imposed by each Contracting State, or by its political subdivisions or local authorities."
28 That "federal law has long embodied a preference for the arm's length method, in the sense that this method is used in computing the federal income tax liability of multinational corporations," does not render a State's use of a different method unconstitutional, as the Solicitor General points out. Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 17-18 (emphasis in original), citing Mobil Oil Corp. v. Commissioner of Taxes of Vt., 445 U. S. 425, 448 (1980) ("Concurrent federal and state taxation of income, of course, is a well-established norm. Absent some explicit directive from Congress, we cannot infer that treatment of foreign income at the federal level mandates identical treatment by the States.").
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