Court Opinion

ID: 9427271
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:20:14.899683+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:05.724234
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Blackmun,
dissenting.
The unspoken, but obvious, premise of the majority opinion is the fear that a Commerce Clause invalidation of Iowa’s single-factor sales formula will lead the Court into problems and difficulties in other cases yet to come. I reject that premise.
I agree generally with the content of Mr. Justice Powell’s opinion in dissent. I join that opinion because I, too, feel that the Court has a duty to resolve, not to- avoid, these problems of “delicate adjustment,” Boston Stock Exchange v. State Tax Comm’n, 429 U. S. 318, 329 (1977), and because the opinion well demonstrates that Iowa’s now anachronistic single-factor sales formula runs headlong into overriding Commerce Clause considerations and demands.
Today’s decision is bound to be regressive.1 Single-factor formulas are relics of the early days of state income taxation.2 The three-factor formulas were inevitable improvements and, while not perfect, reflect more accurately the realities of the business and tax world. With their almost universal adoption by the States, the Iowa system’s adverse and parochial impact on commerce comes vividly into focus. But with its *283single-factor formula now upheld by the Court, there is little reason why other States, perceiving or imagining a similar advantage to local interests, may not go back to the old ways. The end result, in any event, is to exacerbate what the Commerce Clause, absent governing congressional action, was devised to avoid.

 Iowa is not a member of the Multistate Tax Commission. Tr. of Oral Arg. 33. See United States Steel Corp. v. Multistate Tax Comm’n, 434 U. S. 452 (1978).

 Iowa’s income tax was first adopted in 1934. 1933-1934 Iowa Acts, Ex. Sess., ch. 82; Tr. of Oral Arg. 29. Its single-factor sales formula was embraced in § 28 of that original Act.