Cite as: 514 U. S. 175 (1995)
Breyer, J., dissenting
homa tax attaches is not the interstate transportation of passengers but the sale of a bus ticket (combined, perhaps, with transportation to the state line). See ante, at 190 ("The taxable event comprises agreement, payment, and delivery of some of the services in the taxing State . . ."). Thus, the majority suggests that a tax on transportation (as opposed to the sale of a bus ticket) by a different State might be "successive," ante, at 192, but is not "double taxation" in a constitutionally relevant way, ante, at 191; see ante, at 190 ("[N]o other State can claim to be the site of the same combination"). I concede that Oklahoma could have a tax of the kind envisioned, namely, one that would tax the bus company for the privilege of selling tickets. But, whether or not such a tax would pass constitutional muster should depend upon its practical effects. To suggest that the tax here is constitutional simply because it lends itself to recharacterizing the taxable event as a "sale" is to ignore economic reality. Because the sales tax is framed as a percentage of the ticket price, it seems clear that the activity Oklahoma intends to tax is the transportation of passengers—not some other kind of conduct (like selling tickets).
In any event, the majority itself does not seem to believe that Oklahoma is taxing something other than bus transportation; it seems to acknowledge the risk of multiple taxation. The Court creates an ingenious set of constitutionally based taxing rules in footnote 6—designed to show that any other State that imposes, say, a gross receipts tax on its share of bus ticket sales would likely have to grant a credit for the Oklahoma sales tax (unless it forced its own citizens to pay both a sales tax and a gross receipts tax). But, one might have said the same in Central Greyhound. Instead of enforcing its apportionment requirement, the Court could have simply said that once one State, like New York, imposes a gross receipts tax on "receipts received . . . by reason of any sale . . . made" in that State, any other State, trying to tax the gross receipts of its share of bus ticket sales, might have
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