Page:United States Reports 546.pdf/312

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546US1

Unit: $U11

[08-22-08 15:19:52] PAGES PGT: OPIN

Cite as: 546 U. S. 95 (2005)

101

Opinion of the Court

2003), and because the ultimate purchasers of the fuel, nonIndian casino patrons, receive the bulk of their governmental services from the State, id., at 1309. The court held that the State’s tax did not interfere with the Nation’s right of self-government, adding that “a tribe cannot oust a state from any power to tax on-reservation purchases by nonmem­ bers of the tribe by simply imposing its own tax on the trans­ actions or by otherwise earning its revenues from the tribal business.” Id., at 1311. The Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit reversed. 379 F. 3d 979 (2004). It determined that, under Bracker, the balance of state, federal, and tribal interests favored the Tribe. The Tenth Circuit reasoned that the Nation’s fuel revenues were “derived from value generated primarily on its reservation,” 379 F. 3d, at 984—namely, the creation of a new fuel market by virtue of the presence of the casino—and that the Nation’s interests in taxing this reservation-created value to raise revenue for reservation infrastructure out­ weighed the State’s “general interest in raising revenues,” id., at 986. We granted certiorari, 543 U. S. 1186 (2005), and now reverse. II Although we granted certiorari to determine whether Kansas may tax a non-Indian distributor’s off-reservation receipt of fuel without being subject to the Bracker interest­ balancing test, Pet. for Cert. i, the Nation maintains that Kansas’ “tax is imposed not on the off-reservation receipt of fuel, but on its on-reservation sale and delivery,” Brief for Respondent 11 (emphasis in original). As the Nation recog­ nizes, under our Indian tax immunity cases, the “who” and the “where” of the challenged tax have significant conse­ quences. We have determined that “[t]he initial and fre­ quently dispositive question in Indian tax cases . . . is who bears the legal incidence of [the] tax,” Oklahoma Tax Comm’n v. Chickasaw Nation, 515 U. S. 450, 458 (1995) (em­ phasis added), and that the States are categorically barred