Is there a way to set up a customer as taxable in one state but not another

We have a business worldwide. In the US we have situations where a customer is taxable in some states and tax exempt in others, Seeing that we have only one tax explanation code per customer, is there a way of achieving the required functionality through vanilla software setup?.

We prefer not to use the approach of creating multiple customer masters for the same customer and link them through a parent.

Many thanks,

Charles