![handle is hein.journals/ailj1000 and id is 1 raw text is: Know Your Enemy: Local Taxation and Tax Agreements in Indian Country
Anthony S. Broadman'
Intergovernmental disputes between tribes and their neighbors have educated
states about tribal sovereignty. What many state governments have learned,
through litigation, political battle, and intergovernmental dispute, is that even
when states have won tax disputes, they have lost.2 This dependably pyrrhic
result has driven rational state actors-state taxing authorities acting consistently
with their own best fiscal interests-to pursue negotiated agreements. Today,
state-tribal tax compacts, while often controversial,3 are commonplace.
Counties and cities, on the other hand, with some admirable exceptions, have yet
to learn, or heed, lessons from inter-local tax disputes. As it stands, tribes must
be prepared for future battles over local taxation in Indian Country, particularly in
regard to real or personal property owned by tribes. But as counties and
municipal governments slowly learn the lessons already learned by the states,
tribes should also be ready to negotiate intergovernmental solutions to inter-local
tax disputes.
The Backdrop in Brief
Disputes between states and tribes are not a recent phenomenon. Indeed, in
1831, the seminal Cherokee Nation v. Georgia,4 which involved Georgia's
involuntary formation of Cherokee County, set the parameters of state-tribal
relations adhered to today. By 1885, in Utah & Northern Railway v. Fisher,5 the
U.S. Supreme Court had embarked on the county-tribe property tax dispute
odyssey-one that has usually harmed tribes. While high profile tribal-state
disputes continue to occur, a new generation of intergovernmental fights may
soon outnumber them. States' local components-counties, cities, and
municipalities-do not yet understand tribal sovereignty. And as local
1 Anthony S. Broadman is a partner with Galanda Broadman in Seattle, Washington. His practice
focuses on issues critical to Indian Country. This paper stems from remarks made by the author
at the 25th Annual Coming Together of Peoples Conference at the University of Wisconsin
College of Law on March 25, 2011. The author wishes to thank the University of Wisconsin Law
School Indigenous Law Students Association for their gracious hospitality and for fostering an
environment of exacting scholarship in the tribal tax arena. All rights reserved.
2 See, e.g., Washington v. Confederated Tribes of the Colville Indian Reservation, 447 U.S. 134,
162 (1980) where the Court suggested that states are limited in their recourse when operating on
reservation. In Colville, the Court noted that [i]t is significant that these seizures take place
outside the reservation, in locations where state power over Indian affairs is considerably more
expansive than it is within reservation boundaries. Id.; see also STUART THRONSON,
INTERGOVERNMENTAL TAX AGREEMENTS: WASHINGTON STATE'S EXPERIENCE WITH CIGARETTE TAX
COMPACTS 4 (2006) (noting the hollow victory of Co/ville) (on file with author)..
3 See Automotive United Trades Organization v. Washington, No. 10-5584, 2010 WL 4365576
W.D. Wash. Oct. 28, 2010) (Complaint available at http://www.autowa.org/pdf/Complaint.pdf).
30 U.S. 1 (1831).
s 116 U.S. 28 (1885).
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