332
Opinion of the Court
Thus, in Henneford v. Silas Mason Co., 300 U. S. 577 (1937), we upheld the State of Washington's tax on the privilege of using any article of tangible personal property within the State. The statute exempted the use of any article that had already been subjected to a sales tax equal to the use tax or greater, so that the use tax effectively applied only to goods purchased out of state. Although the use tax was itself facially discriminatory, we held that the combined effect of the sales and use taxes was to subject intrastate and interstate commerce to equivalent burdens. " 'There is no demand in . . . [the] Constitution that the State shall put its requirements in any one statute,' " we said; rather, " '[i]t may distribute them as it sees fit, if the result, taken in its totality, is within the State's constitutional power.' " Id., at 584 (quoting Gregg Dyeing Co. v. Query, 286 U. S. 472, 480 (1932)). As Justice Cardozo explained for the Court, the complementary arrangement assures that "[w]hen the account is made up, 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.
Since Silas Mason, our cases have distilled three conditions necessary for a valid compensatory tax. First, "a State must, as a threshold matter, 'identif[y] . . . the [intrastate tax] burden for which the State is attempting to compensate.' " Oregon Waste, supra, at 103 (quoting Maryland v. Louisiana, 451 U. S. 725, 758 (1981)). Second, "the tax on interstate commerce must be shown roughly to approximate—but not exceed—the amount of the tax on intrastate
on interstate commerce as being imposed "in lieu" of taxes on intrastate commerce. See, e. g., Railway Express Agency, Inc. v. Virginia, 358 U. S. 434, 436 (1959); Postal Telegraph Cable Co. v. Adams, 155 U. S. 688, 700 (1895). This last class of cases, however, has involved taxes which were at least arguably not facially discriminatory, and we have evaluated these cases under a somewhat different standard.
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