By the same token, local sales of goods brought into a State from another State are subject to a nondiscriminatory exercise of its taxing power. Such a tax, the Court has said, "has never been regarded as imposing a direct burden upon interstate commerce and has no greater or different effect upon that commerce than a general property tax to which all those enjoying the protection of the State may be subjected"; and this is true, even of goods immediately to be used in interstate commerce.[565] The commerce clause, therefore, does not prohibit a State from imposing special license taxes on merchants using profit sharing coupons and trading stamps although the coupons may have been inserted in retail packages by the manufacturer or shipper outside the State and are redeemable outside the State, either by such manufacturer or shipper, or by some other agency outside the State;[566] nor yet a nondiscriminatory tax upon local peddling of goods and sales thereof by peddlers even though the goods are foreign or interstate imports, since the sale occurs after foreign or interstate commerce thereof has ended.[567] And in Kehrer _v._ Stewart[568] it was held that a State tax upon resident managing agents of nonresident meatpacking houses did not conflict with the commerce clause, regardless of the fact that the greater portion of the business was interstate in character, the tax having been construed by the highest court of the State as applying only to the business of selling to local customers from the stock of "original packages" shipped into the State without a previous sale or contract to sell, and kept and held for sale in the ordinary course of trade. Contrariwise, a tax on sales discriminatory in its incidence against merchandise because of its origin in another State is _ipso facto_ unconstitutional. The leading case is Welton _v._ Missouri,[569] decided in 1876, in which a peddler's license tax confined to the sale of goods manufactured outside the State was set aside. The doctrine of Welton _v._ Missouri has been reiterated many times.[570]
It also follows logically from Coe _v._ Errol,[571] and the cases deriving from it, that a State may impose a nondiscriminatory tax when there is a break in interstate transit, and the goods have not been restored to the current of interstate commerce. The effect of an interruption upon the continuity of an interstate movement depends upon its causes and purposes. If the delay is due to the necessities of the journey, as in the Coe case, where the logs were detained for a time within the State by low water, they are deemed "in the course of commercial transportation, and * * * clearly under the protection of the Constitution."[572] Intention thus often enters into the determination of the question whether goods from another State have come to rest sufficiently to subject them to the local taxing power. In a typical case the Court held that oil shipped from Pennsylvania and held in tanks in Memphis, Tennessee for separation, distribution and reshipment, was subject to the taxing power of the latter State.[573] The delay in transportation resulting from these proceedings on the part of the owners, the Court pointed out, was clearly designed for their own profit and convenience and was not a necessary incident to the method of transportation adopted, as had been the delay of the logs coming from Maine in Coe _v._ Errol. The distinction is fundamental.[574]