South Carolina v. Baker
1988 United States Supreme Court case
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.
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 US Supreme Court also ruled that a nondiscriminatory federal tax on the interest earned on state bonds does not violate the intergovernmental tax immunity doctrine, which permitted the federal taxation of interest income on bonds issued by state governments in the United States. 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."
Sources
Trujillo, P. A. (1988). "Municipal Bond Financing after South Carolina v.
“South Carolina v. Baker” enters the record as 1988 United States Supreme Court case. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what South, Carolina and Baker can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“South Carolina v. Baker” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, South, Carolina and Baker provides the most credible route into that argument.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7566724. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1988, 1982 and 1895.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “South Carolina v. Baker”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow South Carolina v. Baker primary sources, South Carolina v. Baker archive and South research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “South Carolina v. Baker”?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “South Carolina v. Baker” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.