578
Opinion of the Court
tages on local merchants; it may include attempts to give local consumers an advantage over consumers in other States." 11 By encouraging economic isolationism, prohibitions on out-of-state access to in-state resources serve the very evil that the dormant Commerce Clause was designed to prevent.
Of course, this case does not involve a total prohibition. Rather, the statute provides a strong incentive for affected entities not to do business with nonresidents if they are able to so avoid the discriminatory tax. In this way, the statute is similar to the North Carolina "intangibles tax" that we struck down in Fulton Corp. v. Faulkner, 516 U. S., at 327. That case involved the constitutionality under the Commerce Clause of a state "regime that taxe[d] stock [held by in-state shareholders] only to the degree that its issuing corporation participates in interstate commerce." Id., at 333. We held the statute facially discriminatory, in part because it tended "to discourage domestic corporations from plying their trades in interstate commerce." Ibid. Maine's statute has a like effect.
To the extent that affected Maine organizations are not deterred by the statute from doing a principally interstate business, it is clear that discriminatory burdens on interstate commerce imposed by regulation or taxation may also violate the Commerce Clause. We have held that special fees assessed on nonresidents directly by the State when they attempt to use local services impose an impermissible burden on interstate commerce. See, e. g., Chemical Waste Management, Inc. v. Hunt, 504 U. S. 334, 342 (1992) (discriminatory tax imposed on disposal of out-of-state hazardous waste). That the tax discrimination comes in the form of a deprivation of a generally available tax benefit, rather than
11 The Town argues that "the Commerce Clause protects out-of-state competitors but does not protect out-of state consumers." Brief for Respondents 16. As the discussion above indicates, our cases have rejected this view.
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