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and are the real parties in interest," id., at 402, and he ought not receive a windfall for their injury.

But petitioner does not challenge here a tax assessment that merely exceeded the amount authorized by statute; petitioner's complaint was that the Florida tax scheme unconstitutionally discriminated against interstate commerce. The tax injured petitioner not only because it left petitioner poorer in an absolute sense than before (a problem that might be rectified to the extent petitioner passed on the economic incidence of the tax to others), but also because it placed petitioner at a relative disadvantage in the marketplace vis-à-vis competitors distributing preferred local products. See n. 25, supra; see also Bacchus Imports, supra, at 267 (“[E]ven if the tax [was] completely and successfully passed on, it increase[d] the price of [petitioner's] products as compared to the exempted beverages"). To whatever extent petitioner succeeded in passing on the economic incidence of the tax through higher prices to its customers, it most likely lost sales to the favored distributors or else incurred other costs (e. g., for advertising) in an effort to maintain its market share.32 The State cannot persuasively claim that "equity" entitles it to retain tax moneys taken unlawfully from petitioner due to its pass-on of the tax where the pass-on itself furthers the very competitive disadvantage constituting the Commerce Clause violation that rendered the deprivation un

32 Petitioner's relative market share might have stayed constant if the favored distributors reacted by raising their own prices to the same extent as did petitioner when trying to pass on its excess tax burden. If so, however, petitioner still would have suffered a comparative economic injury because the tax pass-on would have enabled the favored distributors alone to derive an increase in total revenue from the discriminatory tax.

Petitioner's market share and total revenue also might have stayed constant, at least in the short run, had all of its sales to liquor retailers been pursuant to cost-plus contracts. See Hanover Shoe, supra, at 494. But respondents do not claim that petitioner was in this position.

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lawful in the first place. We thus reject respondents' reliance on a pass-on defense in this context.34

D

Respondents assert that requiring the State to rectify its unconstitutional discrimination during the contested tax period "would plainly cause serious economic and adminis

33 It is conceivable that a particular distributor's economic injury may be quite severe, for example, if the tax drives it out of the market entirely (though a rational disfavored distributor would not allow itself to incur any greater economic injury through a pass-on than it would have incurred had it simply shouldered the entire burden of the tax deprivation itself). However, the State's obligation under the Due Process Clause to provide a refund (should it choose this avenue of relief) extends only to refunding the excess taxes collected under the Liquor Tax. Petitioner has not sought in this action to recover any actual damages it may have suffered. See Brief for Petitioner on Rearg. 3, n. 2; id., at 7.

34

Respondents suggest that a pass-on defense may nevertheless be invoked as a matter of state law. While they concede that the State waived any sovereign immunity from suit through Fla. Stat. § 215.26's authorization of a state-court refund action, they contend that this waiver extends only to refunds sought where the taxpayer has borne the actual economic burden of the tax, citing State ex rel. Szabo Food Service, Inc. v. Dickinson, 286 So. 2d 529 (Fla. 1973). We need not consider the import of this contention, however, because respondents misdescribe state law. In this case, the Florida Supreme Court characterized its concern about petitioner receiving a "windfall" due to the alleged pass-on of its tax burden as only an "equitable consideration," not a state-law prohibition on relief. Moreover, no such state-law prohibition was recognized in Szabo Food Service, supra. There, the Florida Supreme Court refused to entertain a refund action brought by a distributor of food products to challenge a sales tax alleged to have been imposed erroneously as a matter of state law. The court noted that the legal incidence of the sales tax was placed not on the distributor but rather on its customers and that state law required the economic burden of the tax to be borne by the customers as well. Id., at 532. The court held that under these unique circumstances the distributor lacked standing to seek a refund, explaining that "[o]ne who does not himself bear the financial burden of a wrongfully extracted tax suffers no loss or injury, and accordingly, would not have standing to demand a refund." Ibid. The court in Szabo did not mention, let alone rely on, a state-law immunity bar to the refund action.

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trative dislocation for the State." Brief for Respondents on Rearg. 20. We agree that, within our due process jurisprudence, state interests traditionally have played, and may play, some role in shaping the contours of the relief that the State must provide to illegally or erroneously deprived taxpayers, just as such interests play a role in shaping the procedural safeguards that the State must provide in order to ensure the accuracy of the initial determination of illegality or error. See generally Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U. S. 319, 347-348 (1976). We have already noted that States have a legitimate interest in sound fiscal planning and that this interest is sufficiently weighty to allow States to withhold predeprivation relief for allegedly unlawful tax assessments, providing postdeprivation relief only. See supra, at 37. But even if a State chooses to provide partial refunds as a means of curing the unlawful discrimination (as opposed to increasing the tax assessment of those previously favored), the State's interest in financial stability does not justify a refusal to provide relief. As noted earlier, see supra, at 46, the State here does not and cannot claim that the Florida courts' invalidation of the Liquor Tax was a surprise, and even after the trial court found a Commerce Clause violation the State failed to take reasonable precautions to reduce its ultimate exposure for the unconstitutional tax. And in the future, States may avail themselves of a variety of procedural protections against any disruptive effects of a tax scheme's invalidation, such as providing by statute that refunds will be available to only those taxpayers paying under protest, or enforcing relatively short statutes of limitation applicable to refund actions. See supra, at 45. Such procedural measures would sufficiently protect States' fiscal security when weighed against their obligation to provide meaningful relief for their unconstitutional taxation.

Respondents also observe that the State's choice of relief may entail various administrative costs (apart from the "cost"

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of any refund itself). Cf. Mathews, supra, at 348 ("[T]he Government's interest . . . in conserving scarce fiscal and administrative resources is a factor that must be weighed" when determining precise contours of process due). The State may, of course, consider such costs when choosing between the various avenues of relief open to it. Because the Florida Supreme Court did not recognize in its refund proceeding the State's obligation under the Due Process Clause to rectify the invalidity of its deprivation of petitioner's property, the court did not consider how any administrative costs might influence the selection and fine-tuning of the relief afforded petitioner. We leave this to the state court on remand.

IV

When a State penalizes taxpayers for failure to remit their taxes in timely fashion, thus requiring them to pay first before obtaining review of the tax's validity, federal due process principles long recognized by our cases require the State's postdeprivation procedure to provide a "clear and certain remedy," O'Connor, 223 U. S., at 285, for the deprivation of tax moneys in an unconstitutional manner. In this case, Florida may satisfy this obligation through any form of relief, ranging from a refund of the excess taxes paid by petitioner to an offsetting charge to previously favored distributors, that will cure any unconstitutional discrimination against interstate commerce during the contested tax period. The State is free to choose which form of relief it will provide, so long as that relief satisfies the minimum federal require

35 We reject respondents' intimation that the cost of any refund considered by the State might justify a decision to withhold it. Just as a State may not object to an otherwise available remedy providing for the return of real property unlawfully taken or criminal fines unlawfully imposed simply because it finds the property or moneys useful, so also Florida cannot object to a refund here just because it has other ideas about how to spend the funds.

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ments we have outlined. 36 The judgment of the Florida Supreme Court is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.

It is so ordered.

36 The State is free, of course, to provide broader relief as a matter of

state law than is required by the Federal Constitution. See Bacchus Imports, 468 U. S., at 277, n. 14.

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