This decision overrules National Bellas Hess, Inc. v. Department of Revenue of Ill., 386 U. S. 753, and Quill Corp. v. North Dakota, 504 U. S. 298 which had held that under the Commerce Clause a state could only impose a state sales tax on a seller that had a physical presence in the state. Physical presence is not a rational test under modern commercial conditions and serves to distort rather than protect interstate commerce. Under the Commerce Clause, rid of Hess and Quill, the states’ power to impose sales taxes on sellers is limited only to taxing activities with a substantial nexus to the taxing state. Here, the South Dakota tax law at issue taxes only sales by sellers of more than $100,000 and more than 200 sales per year into South Dakota, which more than suffices to show the required nexus to South Dakota.
United States Supreme Court (Kennedy, J.; Roberts, C.J., Breyer, Sotomayor, & Kagan, JJ., dissenting); June 21, 2018; 2018 U.S. LEXIS 3835