State Income Taxation of Multijurisdictional Corporations, Part II: Reflections on ASARCO and Woolworth

The first part of this Article, State Income Taxation of Multijurisdictional Corporations: Reflections on Mobil, Exxon, and H.R. 5076, did not contemplate a sequel. The Supreme Court’s decisions last term in two state corporate income tax cases, however, created an irresistible opportunity to write one. The Court’s opinions in ASARCO and Woolworth picked up where its opinions in Mobil and Exxon left off. Yet the direction taken by these more recent decisions veers sharply from the course ostensibly set by their predecessors. This Article will consider the Court’s latest pronouncements in this area in a continuing if quixotic effort to discover where they may be leading. After analyzing the Court’s decisions in ASARCO and Woolworth against the background of the uniform state law from which they arose, the Article explores the framework of state income taxation of multijurisdictional corporations in the wake of these decisions.