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ests of interstate commerce, and of the states, with their power to impose reasonable taxes upon incidents connected with that commerce. See Gwin, White & Prince, Inc. v. Henneford, 305 U. S. 434, 441. We continue at that task, characterized long ago as an area of "nice distinctions." Galveston, Harrisburg & S. A. R. Co. v. Texas, 210 U. S. 217, 225.

There is no question here of Due Process. The Gas Company's property is in the taxing state where the taxable incidents occurred. McLeod v. Dilworth Co., 322 U. S. 327, 329. See Nippert v. City of Richmond, 327 U. S. 416, 423. Nor is the measure used to calculate the amount of the tax challenged. That measure is $1.50 on each thousand dollars of capital employed within Mississippi. Southern Gas Corp. v. Alabama, 301 U. S. 148, 156, Third. The attack on the Mississippi statute is that it violates the Commerce Clause by putting a tax on the commerce itself.

The local incidents covered by the definition of doing business hereinbefore set out, § 9312, Mississippi Code, supra, were said by the Supreme Court in this case to be "the local activities in maintaining, keeping in repair, and otherwise in manning the facilities of the system" in Mississippi. 201 Miss. 670, 674, 29 So. 2d 268, 270.*

Such local incidents form a sound basis for taxation by a state of foreign corporations doing interstate business. For example, we have upheld state taxes on sales after completion of the interstate transit, McGoldrick v. Berwind-White Coal Mining Co., 309 U. S. 33; on production of electricity for interstate commerce, Utah Power & L. Co. v. Pfost, 286 U. S. 165, compare Fisher's Blend Station, Inc. v. Tax Comm'n, 297 U. S. 650, 655; a privilege tax on the operation of machines for the production of electricity to drive gas in interstate commerce, Coverdale v. Arkansas-Louisiana Pipe Line Co., 303 U. S. 604; a use tax on rails shipped interstate for immediate incorporation into an interstate transportation system, Southern Pacific Co. v. Gallagher, 306 U. S. 167.

We have upheld a franchise tax on a foreign corporation authorized to do business and making sales in a state other than its actual or

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The cases just cited in the note show that, from the viewpoint of the Commerce Clause, where the corporations carry on a local activity sufficiently separate from the interstate commerce, state taxes may be validly laid, even though the exaction from the business of the taxpayer is precisely the same as though the tax had been levied upon the interstate business itself." But the choice of a local incident for the tax, without more, is not enough. There are always convenient local incidents in every interstate operation. Nippert v. City of Richmond, supra, at 423. The incident selected should be one that does not lend itself to repeated exactions in other states. Otherwise intrastate commerce may be preferred over interstate commerce. Again, where there is a state exaction for some intrastate privilege that discriminates against interstate commerce, it is invalid even though it is sufficiently disconnected from the commerce to be taxable otherwise."

The Mississippi tax under consideration is not discriminatory. It is levied, in addition to ad valorem taxes, on corporations created under Mississippi laws, those admitted to do business in Mississippi and those operating in

business domicile, Ford Motor Co. v. Beauchamp, 308 U. S. 331; a privilege tax on a foreign corporation doing business in the state upon a proportion of property in the taxing state that was computed by using interstate commerce as an element, Hump Hairpin Co. v. Emmerson, 258 U. S. 290; Western Cartridge Co. v. Emmerson, 281 U. S. 511; an excise on intrastate manufacturing, added to an ad valorem tax and measured by sales, including out of state, American Mfg. Co. v. St. Louis, 250 U. S. 459, and see Powell, 60 Harv. L. Rev. 501, 508 and 727, Freeman v. Hewit, 329 U. S. 249, 255; a license for storing goods at rest in the state under a transit privilege, Independent Warehouses, Inc. v. Scheele, 331 U. S. 70.

5 See Western Live Stock v. Bureau, 303 U. S. 250, 254.

• See Western Live Stock v. Bureau, 303 U. S. 250, 255.

7 See Best & Co. v. Maxwell, 311 U. S. 454; Nippert v. City of Richmond, supra, at 431-32. Cf. Aero Mayflower Transit Co. v. Board of Railroad Comm'rs, 332 U. S. 495, 501-502.

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the state without any authority from the state. See note 1, supra. Petitioner operated local compressor stations. We have heretofore held that the generation of electric energy for the operation of such stations was subject to state taxation without violation of the Commerce Clause. Coverdale v. Arkansas-Louisiana Pipe Line Co., 303 U. S. 604. A glance at the activities, named above, listed by the Supreme Court of Mississippi, shows that there is no possibility of multiple taxation through the same exactions by other states. The amount of the tax is reasonable. It is properly apportioned to the investment in Mississippi."

However, a state tax upon a corporation doing only an interstate business may be invalid under our decisions because levied (1) upon the privilege of doing interstate business within the state,10 or (2) upon some local event so much a part of interstate business as to be in effect a

8 See Hump Hairpin Co. v. Emmerson, 258 U. S. 290, 295, and Western Cartridge Co. v. Emmerson, 281 U. S. 511, 514.

"See Southern Gas Corp. v. Alabama, 301 U. S. 148, 156, Third, and cases cited; International Harvester Co. v. Evatt, 329 U. S. 416, 422-23; Aero Mayflower Transit Co. v. Board of Railroad Comm'rs, 332 U. S. 495, 501–502.

10 This Court has held many times that a state has no power to refuse or tax the privilege of doing interstate business. A foreign corporation, seeking or requiring no privilege from a state such as the power of eminent domain, the right to use public ways or beds of streams, and without federal charter or other federal statutory privilege, cannot be denied the right to enter a state, remain there and operate a purely interstate business without a state franchise. Crutcher v. Kentucky, 141 U. S. 47, 56; International Textbook Co. v. Pigg, 217 U. S. 91, 107 (3); Dahnke-Walker Milling Co. v. Bondurant, 257 U. S. 282. See also California v. Pacific R. Co., 127 U. S. 1; Luxton v. North River Bridge Co., 153 U. S. 525; Colorado v. United States, 271 U. S. 153, 164; State ex rel. Board v. Stanolind Pipe Line Co., 216 Iowa 436, 445, 249 N. W. 366, 371.

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tax upon the interstate business itself." Petitioner asserts that the Mississippi statute so offends.

First. This Court has drawn the distinction in the field of pipe line taxation between state statutes on the privilege of doing business where only interstate business was done and those upon appropriate local incidents. In Ozark Pipe Line Corp. v. Monier, 266 U. S. 555, the Ozark Pipe Line Corporation operated an oil pipe line from Oklahoma, through Missouri to a point in Illinois. Oil was neither received nor delivered in Missouri. This was interstate transportation. Interstate Natural Gas Co. v. Power Comm'n, 331 U. S. 682, 689, and cases cited at note 12. It had its principal office in Missouri. It had a license from Missouri authorizing it to engage 'exclusively in the business of transporting crude petroleum by pipe line.'" Page 561. The state tax was an apportioned franchise tax.12 It was construed by this Court as a tax "upon the privilege or right to do

11 Freeman v. Hewit, 329 U. S. 249, "because it taxes the very process of interstate commerce" (p. 253), it is "a direct imposition on that very freedom of commercial flow which for more than a hundred and fifty years has been the ward of the Commerce Clause" (p. 256); Joseph v. Carter & Weekes Co., 330 U. S. 422, "Stevedoring, we conclude, is essentially a part of the commerce itself and therefore a tax . . . upon the privilege of conducting the business of stevedoring for interstate and foreign commerce, measured by those gross receipts, is invalid" (p. 433); this follows "a line of precedents outlawing taxes on the commerce itself" (p. 433). Galveston, Harrisburg & S. A. R. Co. v. Texas, supra at 224.

See Adams Mfg. Co. v. Storen, 304 U. S. 307, 312, n. 11; see comments on American Mfg. Co. v. St. Louis, n. 4, supra.

12 Mo. Rev. Stat. § 9836 (1919):

". . . Every corporation, not organized under the laws of this state, and engaged in business in this state, shall pay an annual franchise tax to the state of Missouri equal to one-tenth of one per cent. of the par value of its capital stock and surplus employed in business in this state.

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business." Page 562. Virginia v. Imperial Coal Co., 293 U. S. 15, 20. As such a tax upon a corporation doing only an interstate business, it was held invalid under the Commerce Clause.13

In State Tax Commission v. Interstate Natural Gas Co., 284 U. S. 41, a pipe line ran from Louisiana, through Mississippi and back to Louisiana. Two local Mississippi distributors took gas in that state from the re

13 The opinion evoked a dissent by Justice Brandeis which pointed out that: "The tax assailed is not laid upon the occupation . . ."; nor "upon the privilege of doing business." Pp. 567-68. The Justice concluded that "a tax is not a direct burden merely because it is laid upon an indispensable instrumentality of such commerce," but that the contrary is true "where it is upon property moving in interstate commerce." P. 569. Compare Ozark with Atlantic Lumber Co. v. Comm'r, 298 U. S. 553.

The Ozark case has had a long history in this Court. Since 288 U. S., it has not been cited in a manner pertinent to our present issue, except to be distinguished, sometimes narrowly. In Helson & Randolph v. Kentucky, 279 U. S. 245, 249, and State Tax Commission v. Interstate Natural Gas Co., 284 U. S. 41, 43, it was cited with approval for the proposition that a state cannot lay a tax on the occupation or the business of carrying on interstate commerce. In Anglo-Chilean Nitrate Sales Corp. v. Alabama, 288 U. S. 218, Ozark was relied upon to hold unconstitutional a state tax upon a corporation which was qualified to do intrastate business within the state but which in fact did only an interstate business. Cardozo, J., joined by Brandeis, J., and Stone, J., dissented on the ground that the tax could be supported as a tax laid upon the privilege to do intrastate business. Ozark was next before the Court in Virginia v. Imperial Coal Co., supra, a case involving a tax on tangible and intangible property situated and used within the state to carry on an exclusively interstate business. In that case it was distinguished on the ground that an ad valorem property tax, and not a privilege tax, was before the Court. In Atlantic Lumber Co. v. Comm'r, 298 U. S. 553, involving an excise tax on corporations doing business within Massachusetts, Ozark was again distinguished, this time on the ground that the Lumber Co. was engaged in local activities within the state and, therefore, that the burden imposed upon its interstate commerce was remote and incidental. Again, in Southern Gas Corp. v. Alabama, 301 U. S. 148,

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