Citations 485 U.S. 505 (more) Concurrence Scalia Date decided 1988 | Concurrence Stevens Concurrence Rehnquist | |
Full case name South Carolina v. Baker, Secretary of the Treasury on Exceptions to Report of Special Master Majority Brennan, joined by White, Marshall, Blackmun, Stevens; Scalia (except for Part II) Similar Pollock v Farmers' Loan & Tr, Brushaber v Union Pacific R, Hylton v United States, New York v United States, Eisner v Macomber | ||
South Carolina v. Baker, 485 U.S. 505 (1988), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled that section 310(b)(1) of the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982 (TEFRA) does not violate the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Contents
Background
TEFRA continued the federal tax exemption for state bond interest as long as the bond is registered, with each seller and buyer being recorded for audit purposes. Anonymous bearer bonds, which often were used in money laundering, were no longer exempt, however. South Carolina sued to have the federal tax advantage restored for all their bonds.
Decision
The Court also ruled that a nondiscriminatory federal tax on the interest earned on state bonds does not violate the intergovernmental tax immunity doctrine; this is the case which permitted the federal taxation of interest income on bonds issued by state governments in the United States. In this case, the Supreme Court stated that the contrary decision of the Court in the case of Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co. (1895) had been "effectively overruled by subsequent case law."