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WAGNON v. PRAIRIE BAND POTAWATOMI NATION Opinion of the Court
Limiting the interest-balancing test exclusively to on reservation transactions between a nontribal entity and a tribe or tribal member is consistent with our unique Indian tax immunity jurisprudence. We have explained that this jurisprudence relies “heavily on the doctrine of tribal sover eignty . . . which historically gave state law ‘no role to play’ within a tribe’s territorial boundaries.” Oklahoma Tax Comm’n v. Sac and Fox Nation, 508 U. S. 114, 123–124 (1993) (quoting McClanahan v. Arizona Tax Comm’n, 411 U. S. 164, 168 (1973)). We have further explained that the doc trine of tribal sovereignty, which has a “significant geograph ical component,” Bracker, supra, at 151, requires us to “re vers[e]” the “ ‘general rule’ ” that “ ‘exemptions from tax laws should . . . be clearly expressed.’ ” Sac and Fox, supra, at 124 (quoting McClanahan, supra, at 176). And we have determined that the geographical component of tribal sover eignty “ ‘provide[s] a backdrop against which the applicable treaties and federal statutes must be read.’ ” Sac and Fox, supra, at 124 (quoting McClanahan, supra, at 172). Indeed, the particularized inquiry we set forth in Bracker relied spe cifically on that backdrop. See 448 U. S., at 144–145 (noting that where “a State asserts authority over the conduct of non-Indians engaging in activity on the reservation . . . we have examined the language of the relevant federal treaties and statutes in terms of both the broad policies that underlie them and the notions of sovereignty that have developed from historical traditions of tribal independence” (emphasis added)). We have taken an altogether different course, by contrast, when a State asserts its taxing authority outside of Indian country. Without applying the interest-balancing test, we the interest-balancing test. Indeed, the Chickasaw dicta should apply a fortiori here; the upstream approach is less burdensome on the Tribe because it does not include the collecting and remitting requirements that typically, and permissibly, accompany a consumer tax.
