Cite as: 520 U. S. 564 (1997)
Opinion of the Court
involves a discrimination against [interstate] commerce." Pennsylvania v. West Virginia, 262 U. S. 553, 596 (1923).
To allow a State to avoid the strictures of the dormant Commerce Clause by the simple device of labeling its discriminatory tax a levy on real estate would destroy the barrier against protectionism that the Constitution provides. We noted in West Lynn Creamery, Inc. v. Healy, 512 U. S. 186 (1994), that "[t]he paradigmatic . . . law discriminating against interstate commerce is the protective [import] tariff or customs duty, which taxes goods imported from other States, but does not tax similar products produced in State." Id., at 193. Such tariffs are "so patently unconstitutional that our cases reveal not a single attempt by a State to enact one." Ibid. Yet, were the Town's theory adopted, a State could create just such a tariff with ease. The State would need only to pass a statute imposing a special real estate tax on property used to store, process, or sell imported goods. By gearing the increased tax to the value of the imported goods at issue, the State could create the functional equivalent of an import tariff. As this example demonstrates, to accept the Town's theory would have radical and unacceptable results.
We therefore turn to the question whether our prior cases preclude a State from imposing a higher tax on a camp that serves principally nonresidents than on one that limits its services primarily to residents.
IV
There is no question that were this statute targeted at profit-making entities, it would violate the dormant Commerce Clause. "State laws discriminating against interstate commerce on their face are 'virtually per se invalid.' " Fulton Corp. v. Faulkner, 516 U. S. 325, 331 (1996) (quoting Oregon Waste Systems, Inc. v. Department of Environmental Quality of Ore., 511 U. S. 93, 99 (1994)). It is not necessary to look beyond the text of this statute to determine that it
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