FANG LIN AI аnd Does 1-1000, Plaintiffs-Appellants, Concorde Garment Manufacturing Corporation, Plaintiff-counter-defendant-Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, Defendant-counter-claimant-Appellee.
No. 13-17491
United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
Filed Dec. 17, 2015
Argued and Submitted June 10, 2015.
We deny the petition with respect to petitioners’ claim that the Mobile-Sierra presumption cannot apply to the spot sales at issue in this case and dismiss the evidentiary challenges for lack of jurisdiction.
DENIED IN PART; DISMISSED IN PART.
Jr., Jones Day, San Francisco, CA; Steven P. Pixley, Saipan, MP, for Plaintiff-Counter-Defendant-Appellant Concorde Garment Manufacturing.
Colin M. Thompson, Thompson Law Office, LLC, Saipan, MP, for Plaintiffs-Appellants Fang Lin Ai, et al.
Bridget M. Rowan (argued), Tamara W. Ashford, Teresa T. Milton, United States Department of Justice, Tax Division, Washington, DC; Alicia A.G. Limtiaco, United States Attorney, United States Attorney‘s Office, Saipan, MP, for Defendant-Counter-Claimant-Appellee.
Craig E. Stewart (argued), Kelsey Israel-Trummel, and Edward Patrick Swan,
OPINION
WARDLAW, Circuit Judge:
Concorde Garment Manufacturing Corporation, and more than 4,000 temporary, nonresident former employees of Concorde, appeal from the district court‘s entry of judgment on the pleadings in favor of the United States.1 The district court held that temporary foreign workers in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (“CNMI“) and their employers are required to pay Federal Insurance Contributions Aсt (“FICA“) taxes, which fund Social Security and Medicare. Section 606(b) of the Covenant governing U.S.-CNMI relations provides that U.S. laws that impose excise taxes to support the Social Security system apply to the CNMI
I. Background
Appellants Concorde Garment Manufacturing Corporatiоn (“Concorde“) and the Chinese national, nonresident workers formerly employed at Concorde‘s facilities in the CNMI (“Employees“) paid FICA taxes from the years 2004 to 2007. In 2008, Appellants filed refund claims for those payments. The Internal Revenue Service (“IRS“) refunded Concorde‘s 2006 FICA taxes but otherwise took no action on Appellants’ claims. Thereafter, Appellants sued the United States in the U.S. District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands to recover the remainder of the FICA taxes they had paid. The United States counter-claimed to recover the refund of Concorde‘s 2006 FICA taxes, which it argued was erroneously issued. The district court ruled that all workers and their employеrs in the CNMI are subject to FICA, regardless of the citizenship of either.
Appellants timely filed this appeal, arguing that (1) the Covenant was intended to subject only CNMI citizens, not temporary nonresident foreign workers, to FICA taxes; (2) even if FICA generally applies to all workers and their employers in the CNMI, Employees are entitled to the FICA tax exemption for temporary nonresident Filipino workers in Guam; (3) even if the first two arguments are rejected, the employee portion of FICA does not apply because it is an income tax, and only excise and self-employment taxes that support Social Security apply to the CNMI; and (4) the statutory basis for applying FICA tо Appellants is unconstitutionally vague.3
II. Standard of Review
We review de novo an order granting judgment on the pleadings, accepting facts alleged by the nonmoving party as true and drawing all inferences in its favor. LeGras v. AETNA Life Ins. Co., 786 F.3d 1233, 1236 (9th Cir.2015). We also review de novo underlying issues of statutory interpretation and constitutionality. Fournier v. Sebelius, 718 F.3d 1110, 1117-18 (9th Cir.2013), cert. denied, U.S. —, 134 S.Ct. 1501, 188 L.Ed.2d 378 (2014).
We have held that “taxing statute[s] must be construed most strongly in favor of the taxpayer and against the government.” Greyhound Corp. v. United States, 495 F.2d 863, 869 (9th Cir.1974). However, “[w]e are not impressed by the argument that [any doubtful question] should be resolved in favor of the taxpayer.” White v. United States, 305 U.S. 281, 292, 59 S.Ct. 179, 83 L.Ed. 172 (1938). Thus, “where the rights of suitors turn on the construction of a [tax] statute . . . it is our duty to decide what that construction fairly should be,” and “doubts which may arise upon a cursory examinatiоn of [tax statutes may] disappear when they are read, as they must be, with every other material part of the statute, and in the light of their legislative history.” Id. (citation omitted); see also Irwin v. Gavit, 268 U.S. 161, 168, 45 S.Ct. 475, 69 L.Ed. 897 (1925) (“It is said that the tax laws should be construed favorably for the taxpayers. But that is not a reason for creating a doubt or for exaggerating one when it is no greater than we can bring ourselves to feel in this case.“).
Therefore, while tax statutes “are not to be extended by implication beyond the clear import of the language used,” United States v. Merriam, 263 U.S. 179, 187-88, 44 S.Ct. 69, 68 L.Ed. 240 (1923), we do not mechanically resolve doubts in favor of the taxpayer but instead resort to the ordinary tools of statutory interpretation. Ultimately, “the literal meaning of the words employed is most important.”4 Id.; see also United States v. Fei Ye, 436 F.3d 1117, 1120 (9th Cir. 2006) (“If the plain language of a statute renders its meaning reasonably clear, [we] will not investigate further unless its application leads to unreasonable or impracticable results.“) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted); N. Mariana Islands v. United States, 279 F.3d 1070, 1074 n. 5 (9th Cir.2002) (“We would be undermining congressional intent if we were to decline to give effect to what section 502(a)(2) of the Covenant by its terms requires . . . .“).
We note that the Federal Circuit has ruled in favor of the government and against the taxpayers in a materially indistinguishable case, a decision which is persuasive, though not dispositive. See Zhang v. United States, 640 F.3d 1358 (Fed.Cir.2011) (Zhang II), cert. denied, U.S. —, 132 S.Ct. 2375, 182 L.Ed.2d 1017 (2012).5 We have recognized, however, that “[u]niformity among Circuits is especially important in tax cases to ensure equal and certain administration of the tax system.” Hill v. Comm‘r, 204 F.3d 1214, 1217 (9th Cir.2000) (quoting Pac. First Fed. Sav. Bank v. Comm‘r, 961 F.2d 800, 803 (9th Cir.1992)). That is particularly true where, as here, a circuit split would create two mutually exclusive rules applicable to the CNMI, leading to uncertainty and obvious forum shopping opportunities.
III. Discussion
A. The CNMI Is “Within the United States” for Purposes of FICA.
1. Covenant § 606(b)
FICA imposes an employer and an employee tax on wages “with respect to
Section 606(b) of the Covenant, in turn, provides:
Those laws of the United States which impose excise and self-employment taxes to support or which provide benefits from the United States Social Security System will upon termination of the Trusteеship Agreement or such earlier date as may be agreed to by the Government of the Northern Mariana Islands and the Government of the United States become applicable to the Northern Mariana Islands as they apply to Guam.
Just as in Guam, then, wages for services performed in the CNMI are subject to FICA taxes, irrespective of citizenship or residence. See
2. Covenant § 606(b) is not limited to citizens or residents of Guam or the CNMI.
Appellants attempt to steer us away from this straightforward conclusion, which flows directly from the plain language of Covenant § 606(b), by advocating a citizenship-based application of FICA to the CNMI. They argue that the phrase in Covenant § 606(b) “as they apply to Guam” is ambiguous, and that the term “Guam” does not mean “Guam,” but actually means “the people who reside in or who are citizens of [that] geographic area[ ].”8 From this manufactured ambiguity, Appellants assert that § 606(b)‘s reference to the CNMI is also ambiguous and could refer to persons in the CNMI, rather than to the geographic area itself. Appellants then argue that § 606(b) dоes not refer to all the people in the CNMI, but instead refers only to citizens of the CNMI. Under this tortured reading of the Covenant, Appellants conclude that
There is no plausible method by which to arrive at Appellants’ conclusion from the plain language of the Covenant and, were § 606(b) amenable to a citizenship-based application, we would decline to adopt that construction because FICA is incompatible with such an application.
To begin with, § 606(b) does not mention citizenship or people, and we see no reason to read those words into the Covenant. Moreover, even if we were to read references to geographic areas as references to people in those geographic areas, our reading would not be limited to citizens. The very extrinsic drafting material Appellants rely upon actually suggests the contrary conclusion. It suggests that references to Guam or to the CNMI could refer either to the geographic areas or “to the people who reside in or who are citizens of” those geographic areas. See 94th Cong. 376. (emphasis added). Thus, there is no plausible way to limit the applicability of § 606(b)‘s cross-reference exclusively to the citizens as opposed to the residents of the CNMI.9
Further, to the extent that any ambiguity exists as to whether the cross-reference to Guam refers to people as opposed to geography, the plain language of FICA compels us to adopt the geographic application. By its terms, FICA never applies solely based upon a worker‘s citizenship. Rather, FICA applies in two instances: (1) when work is performed within the United States, and (2) when work is performed by a U.S. citizen for an American employer. See
3. Intervening legislation does not preclude § 606(b)‘s applicability.
Appellants assert that even if they were subject to FICA pursuant to Covenant § 606(b) as originally drafted, two statutes еnacted after the Covenant was approved, but before § 606(b) became effective in 1986, preclude application of FICA to Appellants. We disagree.
First, Appellants look to a 1981 amendment to
This argument is without merit, and likе the Federal Circuit, we reject it. See Zhang II, 640 F.3d at 1368 (“Contrary to Appellants’ arguments, Congress did not subsequently abandon the substitution of Guam for the CNMI by enacting
Second, Appellants direct us to Section 19 of the Act of 1983,
(a) The President may . . . provide that the requirement of United States citizenship or nationality provided for in any of the statutes listed on pages 63-74 of the Interim Report . . . shall not be applicable to the citizens of the Northern Mariana Islands. . . .
(b) A statute which denies a benefit or imposes a burden or a disability on an alien, his dependents, or his survivors shall, for the purposes of this Act, be considered to impose a requirement of United States citizenship or nationality.
Appellants read § 19(b) out of context when they contend that it actually reads a U.S. citizenship requirement into all U.S. statutes that “den[y] a benefit or impose[] a burden or a disability on an alien.” It turns the Act of 1983 on its head to conclude that § 19(b) excludes aliens from both the benefits and the burdens of a wide range of laws. The very purpose of the 1983 Act was to include CNMI citizens, who remained “aliens” until the official termination of the Trusteeship Agreement in 1986, within benefits programs that explicitly required U.S. citizenship. We therefore join thе Federal Circuit in holding that § 19 of the Act of 1983 has no effect on the applicability of FICA to nonresident workers in the CNMI. See Zhang II, 640 F.3d at 1368-70.
B. The FICA Exemption for Nonresident Filipino Workers in Guam Does Not Extend to Nonresident Chinese Workers in the CNMI.
Appellants next argue that even if FICA applies to nonresident workers and their employers in the CNMI generally, Appellants fit within an exemption to FICA taxation that Congress created for certain nonresident workers in Guam. The exemption on which Appellants rely, however, is expressly limited to Filipino citizens admitted to Guam under H-2 visas. See
Moreover, as Appellants concede, Filipinos were not the only temporary nonresident workers in Guam when the exemption was created. See U.S. House of Rep., Comm. on the Judiciary, Subcomm. on Immigration, Citizenship, and Int‘l Law, The Use of Temporary Alien Labor on Guam 3-4 (1975). In light of this demographic reality, Congress‘s decision to expressly limit the exemption to Filipinos, in part because of our nation‘s unique political ties with the Philippines, suggests that the exemption wаs not meant to cover all nonresident workers in Guam. In sum, Congress singled out Filipinos for preferential treatment. Because it is undisputed that Employees are not Filipinos, the exemption does not apply to them.
Section 606(b) states that “[t]hose laws of the United States which impose excise and self-employment taxes to support . . . the United States Social Security system will . . . become applicable to the [CNMI] as they apply to Guam.” Covenant § 606(b). Appellants contend that even if FICA generally applies to the CNMI, the employee portion does not apply because it is an income tax, not an excise or self-employment tax. See
Section 606(b) does not contain the limitation suggested by Appellants, nor does it state that excise taxes apply in the CNMI as in Guam. Instead, § 606(b) provides that those laws which impose such taxes apply in the CNMI as in Guam. The difference is subtle but crucial: Laws imposing excise taxes, and not simply the еxcise taxes themselves, apply in the CNMI as in Guam. In short, if a law imposes an excise tax to support Social Security, the law—not just that part of the law imposing an excise tax—applies in the CNMI as in Guam.14 Because FICA imposes an excise tax, it applies in the CNMI as in Guam. And because FICA subjects employees in Guam to taxation, it subjects employees in the CNMI to FICA taxes as well.
This plain reading of § 606(b) is reinforced by the section‘s additional reference to laws imposing self-employment taxes. While the reference to laws imposing excise taxes is sufficient to capture FICA in its entirety, self-employment taxes that support Social Security are not included in FICA. Instead, they are found in the Self-Employment Contributions Act (“SECA“). See
Any doubt that this reading is correct is dispelled when § 606(b) is considered in the context of the Covenant as a whole. Another of the Covenant‘s provisions, Section 601(a), provides that “[t]he income tax laws in force in the United States” apply in the CNMI “in the same manner as those laws are in forcе in Guam.” Covenant § 601(a) (emphasis added). The reason for the omission of any specific reference to income taxes in § 606(b) is therefore apparent: Section 601(a) already makes clear that such taxes are applicable in the CNMI. Section 601(a) thus clarifies that “[t]hose laws of the United States which impose excise and self-employment taxes to support . . . the United States Social Security System” do indeed include the employee portion of FICA.
Both the House and Senate Reports produced in connection with Congress‘s approval of the Covenant provide: “Subsection (b) [of Covenant § 606] assures that the laws of the United States which impose taxes to support . . . the United States Social Security System will become applicable to the Northern Marianas as they are applicable to Guam upon termination of the Trusteeship Agreement. . . .” H.R.Rep. No. 94-364, at 11 (1975); S.Rep. No. 94-433, at 83 (1975). As the Federal Circuit aptly observed, “[t]he reports do not distinguish the employer FICA tax from the employee FICA tax, nor do they suggest that one tax applies but the other does not.” Zhang II, 640 F.3d at 1374.
The Section-by-Section Analysis of the Covenant—published by the Marianas Political Status Commission, which assisted in the Covenant‘s drafting—also does not distinguish between the employer and employee FICA taxes. See Zhang II, 640 F.3d at 1375 (noting that “Congress considered the Section-by-Section Analysis prior to approving the Covenant“) (citing S.Rep. No. 94-433, at 65-94); N. Mariana Islands, 399 F.3d at 1065 (“We have relied in previous opinions on the Marianas Political Status Commission‘s authoritative Section-by-Section Analysis of the Covenant to assist us in discerning the meaning of the Covenant.“) (internal quotation marks omitted). Describing Covenant § 606(b), the Section-by-Section Analysis states:
Subsection (b) [of § 606] assures that the laws of the United States which impose taxes to support or which provide benefits from the United States Social Security System will become applicable to the Northern Marianas as they are applicable to Guam upon termination of the Trusteeship Agreement. . . . At this time as well, those laws of the United States which impose taxes to support the United States Social Security System will become applicable. The reason that the Covenant is structured in a way which does not make the United States social security laws applicable immediately is that the taxes which are imposed to support the social security system are very burdensome as compared to the taxes which are paid by the people of the Northern Marianas today . . . [T]hese laws will become effective in the Northern Marianas no later than termination of the Trusteeship, at which time the entire Covenant will be effective.
Marianas Political Status Comm‘n, Section-by-Section Analysis of the Covenant to Establish a Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, 80-81 (1975) (emphasis added).
Likewise, the Commission on Federal Laws, see Covenant § 504, did nоt distinguish between the two taxes. In pertinent part, the summary section of the Commission‘s Second Interim Report states: “Employers and employees in the Northern Mariana Islands are made subject to taxes imposed by [FICA] to support the federal social security system at the time the social security systems of the Northern Mariana Islands and the United States are
In light of this legislative history, we resolve any ambiguity in § 606(b) by concluding that the word “laws” refers to the entire law containing the tax in question—i.e., FICA and SECA. See also Zhang I, 89 Fed.Cl. at 281 (“The[] legislative documents are uniform in their treatment of section 606(b), unambiguously demonstrating that all FICA tax provisions were intended to apply to the CNMI.“).
Moreover, reading § 606(b) to apply the employer portion of FICA without the employee portion would mean subjecting CNMI employers but not CNMI employees to FICA taxation, even though many of the exempt CNMI employees would be able to receive benefits under the system. See Zhang II, 640 F.3d at 1363 (discussing the Court of Federal Claims’ conclusion that Congress clearly intended to avoid such an absurd result).
Ultimately, the text of § 606(b) provides that FICA—a law imposing an excise tax—applies to the CNMI as it applies to Guam. In Guam, employees are subject to FICA, and thus the same is true in the CNMI, regardless of whether that tax is an excise tax or an income tax. It is the law containing the excise tax that applies to the CNMI as to Guam, not merely the “excise tax” itself. See Covenant § 606(b).15
D. The Applicability of FICA to Appellants Through the Covenant Is Not Unconstitutionally Vague.
Appellants argue that, because the IRS has not explained consistently why FICA taxes apply to them, the statutory scheme is unconstitutionally vague. See Vill. of Hoffman Estates v. Flipside, Hoffman Estates, Inc., 455 U.S. 489, 497-99, 102 S.Ct. 1186, 71 L.Ed.2d 362 (1982) (explaining that the void for vagueness doctrine applies to civil statutes). Contrary to Appellants’ suggestion, however, the question is not whether the government applied or interpreted FICA consistently. Instead, the question is whether the scheme that subjects Appellants to FICA taxes is “so vague and indefinite as really to be no rule or standard at all,” Boutilier v. INS, 387 U.S. 118, 123, 87 S.Ct. 1563, 18 L.Ed.2d 661 (1967), or whether a person of ordinary intelligence could understand that the scheme requires payment of FICA taxes, see Ass‘n des Eleveurs de Canards et d‘Oies du Quebec v. Harris, 729 F.3d 937, 946 (9th Cir.2013).
FICA‘s applicability to Appellants is not unclear, as evidenced most prominently by Appellants’ payment of FICA taxes from 2004 through 2007. See, e.g., United States v. Moore, 109 F.3d 1456, 1467 (9th Cir.1997) (finding Gun Control Act was not unconstitutionally vague where “[t]he record show[ed] that both [defеndants] understood their respective legal obligations“). Moreover, the Court of Federal Claims,
Appellants themselves, all courts to consider the issue, and the IRS have consistently read the statutory scheme as requiring Appellants to pay employer and employee FICA taxes. Appellants’ position was not frivоlous, and they were justified in requesting a refund from the IRS. But having a colorable argument that FICA taxes do not apply does not render the statute unconstitutionally vague.16
IV. Conclusion
For the foregoing reasons, we AFFIRM the district court‘s entry of judgment on the pleadings in favor of the United States on Appellants’ claims, as well as the district court‘s entry of judgment on the pleadings in favor of the United States on the United States’ counterclaim.