Quill Corp. v. North Dakota

• Decision Date: 26 May 1992
• Docket Number: No. 91-194.,91-194.
• Citation: 119 L.Ed.2d 91,504 U.S. 298,112 S.Ct. 1904
• Parties: QUILL CORP. v. NORTH DAKOTA, BY AND THROUGH ITS TAX COMMISSIONER, HEITKAMP
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

504 U.S. 298

119 L.Ed.2d 91

112 S.Ct. 1904

QUILL CORP. v. NORTH DAKOTA, BY AND THROUGH ITS TAX COMMISSIONER, HEITKAMP

No. 91-194.

Supreme Court of the United States

Argued January 22, 1992

May 26, 1992

STEVENS, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court with respect to Parts I, II, and III, and the opinion of the Court with respect to Part IV, in which REHNQUIST, C.J., and BLACKMUN, O'CONNOR, and SOUTER, JJ., joined. SCALIA, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment, in which KENNEDY and THOMAS, JJ., joined, post, p. 319. WHITE, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, post, p. 321.

John E. Gaggini argued the cause for petitioner. With him on the briefs were Don S. Harnack, Richard A. Hanson, James H. Peters, Nancy T. Owens, and William P. Pearce.

Nicholas J. Spaeth, Attorney General of North Dakota, argued the cause for respondent. With him on the brief were Laurie J. Loveland, Solicitor General, Robert W. Wirtz, Assistant Attorney General, and Alan H. Friedman, Special Assistant Attorney General.^*

JUSTICE STEVENS delivered the opinion of the Court.

This case, like National Bellas Hess, Inc. v. Department of Revenue of Ill., 386 U.S. 753 (1967), involves a State's attempt to require an out-of-state mail-order house that has neither outlets nor sales representatives in the State to collect and pay a use tax on goods purchased for use within the State. In Bellas Hess we held that a similar Illinois statute violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and created an unconstitutional burden on interstate commerce. In particular, we ruled that a "seller whose only connection with customers in the State is by common carrier or the United States mail" lacked the requisite minimum contacts with the State. Id., at 758.

In this case, the Supreme Court of North Dakota declined to follow Bellas Hess because "the tremendous social, economic, commercial, and legal innovations" of the past quarter-century have rendered its holding "obsole[te]." 470 N.W. 2d 203, 208 (1991). Having granted certiorari, 502 U.S. 808, we must either reverse the State Supreme Court or overrule Bellas Hess. While we agree with much of the state court's reasoning, we take the former course.

I

Quill is a Delaware corporation with offices and warehouses in Illinois, California, and Georgia. None of its employees work or reside in North Dakota, and its ownership of tangible property in that State is either insignificant or nonexistent.¹ Quill sells office equipment and supplies; it solicits business through catalogs and flyers, advertisements in national periodicals, and telephone calls. Its annual national sales exceed $200 million, of which almost $1 million are made to about 3,000 customers in North Dakota. It is the sixth largest vendor of office supplies in the State. It delivers all of its merchandise to its North Dakota customers by mail or common carrier from out-of-state locations.

As a corollary to its sales tax, North Dakota imposes a use tax upon property purchased for storage, use, or consumption within the State. North Dakota requires every "retailer maintaining a place of business in" the State to collect the tax from the consumer and remit it to the State. N.D. Cent. Code § 57-40.2-07 (Supp. 1991). In 1987, North Dakota amended the statutory definition of the term "retailer" to include "every person who engages in regular or system-atic solicitation of a consumer market in th[e] state." § 57-40.2-01(6). State regulations in turn define "regular or systematic solicitation" to mean three or more advertisements within a 12-month period. N.D. Admin. Code § 81-04.1-01-03.1 (1988). Thus, since 1987, mail-order companies that engage in such solicitation have been subject to the tax even if they maintain no property or personnel in North Dakota.

Quill has taken the position that North Dakota does not have the power to compel it to collect a use tax from its North Dakota customers. Consequently, the State, through its Tax Commissioner, filed this action to require Quill to pay taxes (as well as interest and penalties) on all such sales made after July 1, 1987. The trial court ruled in Quill's favor, finding the case indistinguishable from Bellas Hess; specifically, it found that because the State had not shown that it had spent tax revenues for the benefit of the mail-order business, there was no "nexus to allow the state to define retailer in the manner it chose." App. to Pet. for Cert. A41.

The North Dakota Supreme Court reversed, concluding that "wholesale changes" in both the economy and the law made it inappropriate to follow Bellas Hess today. 470 N.W. 2d, at 213. The principal economic change noted by the court was the remarkable growth of the mail-order business "from a relatively inconsequential market niche" in 1967 to a "goliath" with annual sales that reached "the staggering figure of $183.3 billion in 1989." Id., at 208, 209. Moreover, the court observed, advances in computer technology greatly eased the burden of compliance with a "'welter of complicated obligations'" imposed by state and local taxing authorities. Id., at 215 (quoting Bellas Hess, 386 U.S., at 759-760).

Equally important, in the court's view, were the changes in the "legal landscape." With respect to the Commerce Clause, the court emphasized that Complete Auto Transit, Inc. v. Brady, 430 U.S. 274 (1977), rejected the line of cases holding that the direct taxation of interstate commerce was impermissible and adopted instead a "consistent and rational method of inquiry [that focused on] the practical effect of [the] challenged tax." Mobil Oil Corp. v. Commissioner of Taxes of Vt., 445 U.S. 425, 443 (1980). This and subsequent rulings, the court maintained, indicated that the Commerce Clause no longer mandated the sort of physical-presence nexus suggested in Bellas Hess.

Similarly, with respect to the Due Process Clause, the North Dakota court observed that cases following Bellas Hess had not construed "minimum contacts" to require physical presence within a State as a prerequisite to the legitimate exercise of state power. The state court then concluded that "the Due Process requirement of a 'minimal connection' to establish nexus is encompassed within the Complete Auto test" and that the relevant inquiry under the latter test was whether "the state has provided some protection, opportunities, or benefit for which it can expect a return." 470 N.W. 2d, at 216.

Turning to the case at hand, the state court emphasized that North Dakota had created "an economic climate that fosters demand for" Quill's products, maintained a legal infrastructure that protected that market, and disposed of 24 tons of catalogs and flyers mailed by Quill into the State every year. Id., at 218-219. Based on these facts, the court concluded that Quill's "economic presence" in North Dakota depended on services and benefits provided by the State and therefore generated "a constitutionally sufficient nexus to justify imposition of the purely administrative duty of collecting and remitting the use tax." Id., at 219.²

II

As in a number of other cases involving the application of state taxing statutes to out-of-state sellers, our holding in Bellas Hess relied on both the Due Process Clause and the Commerce Clause. Although the "two claims are closely related," Bellas Hess, 386 U.S., at 756, the Clauses pose distinct limits on the taxing powers of the States. Accordingly, while a State may, consistent with the Due Process Clause, have the authority to tax a particular taxpayer, imposition of the tax may nonetheless violate the Commerce Clause. See, e.g., Tyler Pipe Industries, Inc. v. Washington State Dept. of Revenue, 483 U.S. 232 (1987).

The two constitutional requirements differ fundamentally, in several ways. As discussed at greater length below, see Part IV, infra, the Due Process Clause and the Commerce Clause reflect different constitutional concerns. Moreover, while Congress has plenary power to regulate commerce among the States and thus may authorize state actions that burden interstate commerce, see International Shoe Co. v. Washington, 326 U.S. 310, 315 (1945), it does not similarly have the power to authorize violations of the Due Process Clause.

Thus, although we have not always been precise in distinguishing between the two, the Due Process Clause and the Commerce Clause are analytically distinct.

"'Due process' and 'commerce clause' conceptions are not always sharply separable in dealing with these problems. . . . To some extent they overlap. If there is a want of due process to sustain the tax, by that fact alone any burden the tax imposes on the commerce among the states becomes 'undue.' But, though overlapping, the two conceptions are not identical. There may be more than sufficient factual connections, with economic and legal effects, between the transaction and the taxing state to sustain the tax as against due process objections. Yet it may fall because of its burdening effect upon the commerce. And, although the two notions cannot always be separated, clarity of consideration and of decision would be promoted if the two issues are approached, where they are presented, at least tentatively as if they were separate and distinct, not intermingled ones." International Harvester Co. v. Department of Treasury, 322 U.S. 340, 353 (1944) (Rutledge, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part).

Heeding Justice Rutledge's counsel, we consider each constitutional limit in turn.

III

The Due Process Clause "requires some definite link, some minimum connection, between a state and the person, property or transaction it seeks to tax," Miller Brothers Co. v. Maryland, 347 U.S. 340, 344-345 (1954), and that the "income attributed to the State for tax purposes must be rationally related to 'values connected with the taxing State,'" Moorman Mfg. Co. v. Bair, 437 U.S. 267, 273 (1978) (citation omitted). Here, we are concerned...