Lead Opinion
Wyodak Resources Development Corporation (“Wyodak”) sued the United States in federal district court, seeking a refund of coal reclamation fees it allegedly overpaid under the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 (“SMCRA”), 30 U.S.C. §§ 1201-1328. The district court concluded that 28 U.S.C. § 1346(a)(1) provided a basis for federal jurisdiction and a waiver of sovereign immunity because the reclamation fee is an “internal-revenue tax.” See id. However, the court denied relief on the merits and entered summary judgment in favor of the United States. We do not reach the merits of Wyodak’s appeal. Exercising jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, we conclude the district court did not possess jurisdiction. Because the reclamation fee is not an “internal-revenue tax” within the meaning of 28 U.S.C. § 1346(a)(1), Wyodak’s claims may be filed only in the Court of Federal Claims under 28 U.S.C. § 1491.
I
Wyodak operates the Wyodak Mine, a large surface coal mine in the Powder River Basin of Wyoming. As a surface mine operator, Wyodak is subject to SMCRA. To further its goal of restoring mined land, SMCRA created the Abandoned Mine Reclamation Fund (“the Fund”), which exists on the books of the United States Treasury, but is administered by the Secretary of the Interior. 30 U.S.C. § 1231. SMCRA authorizes the Secretary of the Interior to assess reclamation fees on each ton of “coal produced” in the United States to finance the Fund. See id. § 1232. These reclamation fees are collected by the Secretary of the Interior, id., specifically, by the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (“OSM”), see 30 C.F.R. §§ 870.1-19. During the time period at issue in this case, OSM used a two-tiered reclamation fee structure: ten cents per ton for lignite coal, and thirty-five cents per ton for all other grades. See Surface Mining Control & Reclamation Act of 1977, Pub.L. 95-87, tit. IV, § 402(a), 91 Stat. 445, 457.
Between January 1,1980, and December 31, 2005, Wyodak extracted more than 82 million tons of coal from the Wyodak Mine. It reported all of this coal as non-lignite and paid the higher reclamation fee of thirty-five cents per ton. In early 2005, Wyodak retained a consulting chemist to determine whether any of the coal at the Wyodak Mine was lignite. Samples taken from the ground showed that between 9.5% and 12.3% of the coal sampled in situ was lignite. In the first two quarters of 2006, Wyodak reported to OSM that it had extracted more than 2.2 million tons of coal and asserted that 282,988.42 tons of that total was lignite based on the chemist’s studies. In addition, Wyodak claimed that it had overpaid reclamation fees from 1980 to 2005 because some of the coal produced was lignite.
OSM audited Wyodak’s 2006 reports and concluded that Wyodak had underpaid. OSM took the position that SMCRA regulations require the reclamation fee to be calculated “at the time of the initial bona fide sale, transfer of ownership, or use by the operator,” see 30 C.F.R. § 870.12(b), and not while coal remains in the ground. Because any lignite coal mined by Wyodak is comingled with non-lignite coal prior to sale, OSM concluded Wyodak did not qualify for the lower reclamation fee. On the
Wyodak then sued the United States in federal district court, seeking a refund of $2,245,477.14 it allegedly overpaid in reclamation fees, and a declaratory judgment with respect to future fees. Both parties moved for summary judgment. The district court rejected the United States’ argument that the court lacked subject-matter jurisdiction, but granted the government’s motion on the merits.
On appeal, Wyodak contends the district court erred in its merits determination. The government renews its argument that the district court lacked jurisdiction. We do not reach the merits because we agree with the government’s jurisdictional position.
II
A
Most suits for money damages against the United States proceed under the Tucker Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1491, which provides a limited waiver of the United States’ sovereign immunity and grants “jurisdiction [to] the Court of Federal Claims for claims against the United States founded upon the Constitution, Acts of Congress, executive regulations, or contracts and seeking amounts greater than $10,000.” Normandy Apartments, Ltd. v. U.S. Dep’t of Hous. & Urban Dev.,
Wyodak invokes one of those rare statutes that both waives sovereign immunity and grants subject-matter jurisdiction to the district courts, 28 U.S.C. § 1346(a)(1). That statute waives the United States’ sovereign immunity from suit, United States v. Williams,
Any civil action against the United States for the recovery of any internal-revenue tax alleged to have been erroneously or illegally assessed or collected, or any penalty claimed to have been collected without authority or any sum alleged to have been excessive or in any manner wrongfully collected under the internal-revenue laws....
28 U.S.C. § 1346(a)(1).
One short phrase in section 1346, “internal-revenue tax,” establishes the jurisdictional battle lines in this case. Wyodak argues that the SMCRA reclamation fee is an “internal-revenue tax” because it is collected on internal, rather than external, revenue. The United States counters that an “internal-revenue tax” is a tax collected by the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) or imposed under the Internal Revenue Code.
B
We review the district court’s jurisdictional ruling de novo. Huerta v. Gonzales,
At the outset, we must state our disagreement with the district court’s reliance on Horizon Coal. A core tenet of statutory construction is that “identical words used in different parts of the same act are intended to have the same meaning.” Dep’t of Revenue v. ACF Indus.,
This, of course, requires that we decide which of the competing interpretations reflects Congress’ intent. In doing so, we start with the text of the statute. See United States v. Cisneros-Cabrera,
We are also mindful that 28 U.S.C. § 1346 implicates special rules of construction because it waives the United States’ immunity. In determining the extent to which a statute waives sovereign immunity, waiver must not be enlarged beyond the scope of the statutory language, and all
C
As is often the case, the statutory text standing alone does not clearly favor one interpretation over the other. Wyodak claims that “internal revenue” simply refers to any revenue generated within the United States. The government contends that “internal revenue” refers to moneys collected by the IRS, or its precursor, the Bureau of Internal Revenue. Both readings are at least plausible constructions of the bare text. Cf. S. Utah Wilderness Alliance v. Office of Surface Mining Reclamation & Enforcement,
But in construing § 1346(a)(1), we are not constrained to consider the three-word phrase in isolation; we must also consider the context in which the statute was drafted. See Wise,
In other words, at the time the current version of § 1346(a)(1) was amended, its jurisdictional grant was limited and in
Another contextual consideration warrants our attention. In 1952, President Truman issued Reorganization Plan No. 1, which drastically changed the structure of internal revenue collection in the United States. See Bryan T. Camp, Theory and Practice in Tax Administration, 29 Va. Tax Rev. 227, 241 (2009). Since 1862, income taxes had been collected by presidentially-appointed assessors and collectors who were effectively sovereign within their geographic jurisdictions. Id. But after a House Ways and Means Committee inquiry revealed widespread corruption in this system, investigators concluded that the “collectors could not be effectively supervised by the Commissioner [of Internal Revenue], or even by Treasury, because of their political connections.” Id. at 241-42. President Truman’s Plan sought to replace the collectors with district commissioners, who were career civil service employees rather than political appointees. See Reorganization Plan No. 1 of 1952, H.R. Doc. No. 82-327, at 3 (1952). Congress quickly approved the Plan, and over the next two years, the Bureau of Internal Revenue became the IRS, with tax administration being divided among nine geographic regions (headed by regional directors) and sixty-four districts (headed by district directors). Camp, supra, at 242-43. “District directors now held all the old powers of the assessor and collector combined.” Id. at 242.
Having explained its context, we proceed to interpreting the statute itself. The present version of § 1346(a)(1) was created mid-1954, when the eighty-third Congress passed S. 252, 83d Cong. (1st sess.1954), creating Pub.L. No. 83-559, 68 Stat. 589. Sponsored by Georgia Senator Walter George, S. 252 was introduced as a “very simple bill” with two modest goals: “to preserve the right of trial by jury to a [taxpayer claiming a refund] and to permit [him] to bring his suit in the district court in the district in which he lives.” Civil Actions in District Courts to Recover Taxes: Heaving Before the Subcomm. on Improvements in Judicial Machinery of the S. Comm, on the Judiciary, 83d Cong. 2. (1953) [hereinafter S. 252 Hearings ] (statement of Sen. George).
Congress had the recent reorganization of the nation’s internal revenue collection in mind when it considered S. 252. Senator George stated that the bill was necessary because “the reorganization of the Bureau of Internal Revenue created some doubt in the minds of a great many lawyers whether the right of action [against the collector] would survive.” S. 252 Heavings at 2 (statement of Sen. George). Senator George confirmed that the “right of action did survive ... against the chief collector within [a] State.” Id. What had been an action against the collector under the common law could now be brought either as a personal suit against an IRS director, or as a suit against the United States under § 1346(a)(1). However, because at the time S. 252 was passed the usual taxpayer suit was a personal action against the collector, such an action had to be brought in the judicial district in which the collector resided. See S. 252 Hearings
The only change S. 252 made to § 1346(a)(1) was to excise the two conditions for district court jurisdiction (the $10,000 limit or the death of the tax collector), thereby allowing all “internal-revenue tax” refund suits to be brought in district court. In effect, S. 252 recognized that personal suits against the tax collector were a legal fiction, and allowed those suits to be heard in their true form — as “a suit against the United States.” S. 252 Hearings at 4 (statement of Mr. Tuttle). By converting tax actions from personal suits against the collector into suits against the United States, S. 252 allowed the actions to be brought in a taxpayer’s home district.
As S. 252’s limited purpose suggests, the bill was not intended to drastically alter the type of claims that could be brought in federal courts. Rather, the bill merely changed where those claims could be brought. After Pub.L. No. 83-559 was enacted, taxpayers could file tax refund suits in their home districts, rather than being limited to the Court of Claims or the tax collector’s home district. But Pub.L. No. 83-559 was not intended to provide “new substantive rights to the taxpayers; it simply makes it easier for them ... to sue in the jurisdiction in which they reside.” S. 252 Hearings at 4 (statement of J.G. Sourwine, subcommittee counsel).
As this legislative history clarifies, S. 252 did not create any substantive rights that did not exist before its enactment. Accordingly, the “substantive rights” granted by § 1346(a)(1), as amended by Pub.L. No. 83-559, go no further than the rights that existed at common law against the tax collector. Moreover, the legislative history confirms that the only “substantive right[ ],” S. 252 Hearings at 4, granted by § 1346(a)(1) — both before and after its amendment — is the right to sue for a refund of taxes collected by the IRS or the Bureau of Internal Revenue.
Reporting on S. 252, the House Committee on the Judiciary lists a personal suit against the tax collector as one of the four ways “a Federal taxpayer who feels aggrieved by a deficiency assessment against him may contest the Bureau of Internal Revenue’s determination of a tax.” H.R.Rep. No. 83-659, at 1, 1954 U.S.C.C.A.N. 2716, 2716 (1953) (emphasis added). The conference committee explained that S. 252 abolished “[t]he fiction that the [tax refund] action is against an individual (i.e., the director or former director or former collector of Internal Revenue ).” H.R.Rep. No. 83-2276, at 2, 1954 U.S.C.C.A.N. 2716 (1954) (emphasis added). And the Senate subcommittee report explains that the bill was proposed in response to the reorganization of the Bureau of Internal Revenue, S. 252 Hearings at 2, and that the only purpose of S. 252 is “to give the taxpayers throughout the country the same right that those taxpayers” who live in the same district as their Bureau of Internal Revenue tax collector already possessed, S. 252 Hearings at 4, i.e., the right to bring a suit for recovery of taxes that the Bureau of Internal Revenue illegally collected.
We are persuaded by this legislative history that, for purposes of district court jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1346(a)(1), Congress intended the phrase “internal-revenue tax” to mean taxes collected by the IRS. Suits for recovery of other fees and taxes, even if they can be characterized as “internal revenue,” do not fall within the statute’s ambit.
Further, our reading is consistent with case law from other jurisdictions interpreting § 1346(a)(1) — with the exception of the aforementioned Sixth Circuit analysis. The Internal Revenue Code provides that “[t]he Secretary [of the Treasury] shall collect the taxes imposed by the internal revenue laws.” 26 U.S.C. § 6301. We are unable to find any case in which a district court refused § 1346(a)(1) jurisdiction over a tax assessed under the Internal Revenue Code (and therefore within the IRS’ collection authority). See, e.g., Pittston Co. v. United States,
Ill
Unlike the majority opinion, which reads the pertinent statutory language as ambiguous, the concurrence concludes the same language is unambiguous in agreeing with the majority result. The concurrence provides an interesting and educational elaboration of the history of the phrase “internal-revenue law,” but the majority declines to incorporate the concurrence into its decision because it is well-established that, if an act is unambiguous, that ends the matter and resort should not be had to the statutory history. See United States v. Romero,
Wyodak does not argue that the SMCRA reclamation fee is collected by the IRS. Instead, it acknowledges that the fee is collected by OSM. Under the rule we announce today, that ends the inquiry. 28 U.S.C. § 1346(a)(1) did not give the district court jurisdiction over Wyodak’s claim, and Wyodak has not established an alternative basis for district court jurisdiction. It must bring this claim in the Court of Federal Claims.
We VACATE the district court’s judgment and REMAND with orders to DISMISS for lack of subject matter jurisdiction.
Notes
. The government does not argue the reclamation fee is not a tax.
. The right to sue the collector personally was a longstanding creature of common law. Sirian Lamp Co. v. Manning,
Commentators called “[t]he suit against the collector for a refund ... a most anomalous action,” Plumb, supra, at 687, because the collector was deemed personally liable for erroneously collected taxes, see United States v. Kales,
Concurrence Opinion
concurring.
I write separately because, to my mind, the plain language of 28 U.S.C. § 1346(a)(1) compels our decision to reverse. Section 1346(a)(1) gives district courts the power to hear:
[a]ny civil action against the United States for the recovery of any internal-revenue tax alleged to have been erroneously or illegally assessed or collected, or any penalty claimed to have been collected without authority or any sum alleged to have been excessive or in any manner wrongfully collected under the internal-revenue laws.
Accordingly, there are only two ways the district court could’ve lawfully asserted jurisdiction under § 1346(a)(1) to entertain Wyodak’s refund claim: if SMCRA qualifies as an “internal-revenue law” or if SMCRA’s reclamation fee constitutes an “internal-revenue tax.”
To explain why this is so, I begin by examining what the terms “internal-revenue tax” and “internal-revenue law” do and do not encompass as a matter of their plain meaning. I then turn to assess whether SMCRA’s reclamation fee falls within either.
I
Beginning with the phrase “internal-revenue law,” it turns out that each of those words had a specific and nuanced meaning when Congress wrote them into § 1346(a)(1)’s predecessor, the Revenue Act of 1921. See Flora v. United States,
The distinctions along these two axes— between internal and external taxes, on the one hand, and between revenue-raising taxes and regulatory fees, on the other— often bore great consequence. Because of the constitutional constraints on Congress’s regulatory power, hard-won social legislation often could survive constitutional review only if it could convincingly invoke Congress’s taxing authority. See, e.g., Child Labor Tax Case,
At the time Congress invoked this tax-fee distinction to limit the jurisdiction of the district courts in § 1346(a)(l)’s predecessor statute, the difference between a tax and a fee turned largely on legislative purpose. If a law’s purpose was to regulate private behavior, the costs imposed by it were treated as fees — and so required justification under the legislature’s regulatory authority. See 1 Thomas M. Cooley, The Law of Taxation § 27 (4th ed. 1924) (“Duties, excises and license laws, having for their object the common benefit and protection, and designed for the prevention or mitigation of evils, are not acts of taxing power.”); Hill v. Kemp,
The phrase “internal-revenue law” also carried a well-established meaning in 1921. In fact, the term “revenue law” had long been used to circumscribe the jurisdiction of federal courts. For example, Congress used the expression “revenue law” back in
Given this history, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that federal courts had the chance to define the term “revenue law” by 1921. As it turns out, the Supreme Court had done so unequivocally and more than thirty years earlier:
[T]he term “revenue law,” when used in connection with the jurisdiction of the courts of the United States, means a law imposing duties on imports or tonnage, or a law providing in terms for revenue; that is to say, a law which is directly traceable to the power granted to congress by section 8, art. 1, of the constitution, “to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises.”
Hill,
Given this definition, the relationship between the two prongs of § 1346(a)(1) turns out to be quite straightforward: an internal-revenue lato is a law that enacts an internal-revenue tax. See Cooley, supra, § 12 (“Any law which provides for the assessment and collection of a tax to defray the expenses of government is a revenue law.”) (internal quotation marks omitted). So, the present question of jurisdiction under § 1346(a)(1) turns out to be a relatively simple one: We need only determine whether the law at issue was enacted pursuant to Congress’s power to tax or its power to regulate.
II
With this understanding of § 1346(a)(l)’s plain language in mind, it becomes quickly evident that Congress was exercising its regulatory authority when it passed SMCRA. The first clue comes from the declarations found in SMCRA itself. The statute’s announced purpose is “to provide for cooperation between the Secretary of the Interior and the States with respect to the regulation of surface coal mining operations, and the acquisition and reclamation of abandoned mines, and for other purposes.” Pub.L. No. 95-87, 91 Stat. 445 (1977). These “other purposes” turn out to be many but exactly none involves the raising of revenue. See 30 U.S.C. § 1202. What’s more, Congress went to great lengths to note the effects of surface mining on interstate commerce, see 30 U.S.C. § 1201, and even limited certain provisions so that SMCRA would not exceed Congress’s authority to regulate interstate commerce, see 30 U.S.C. § 1291(3) & (28)(A) — none of which would have been necessary, of course, if Congress had simply wanted to pass a tax. And, if that weren’t a clear enough indication of the Legislature’s idea, Congress used the term “fee” consistently and throughout SMCRA. Emphatic in its silence, SMCRA contains not a single reference to any federal tax.
Neither does this appear to have been a failure of vocabulary. To the contrary,
Looking beyond form to substance only confirms that SMCRA is an act of regulation, not taxation. SMCRA’s objective is plainly to “protect the environment” by “assuring] that adequate procedures are undertaken to reclaim” surface mines. See 30 U.S.C. § 1202(d), (e). In service of this goal, SMCRA imposes a fee on coal mining and commands that the resulting funds be used to reduce and repair the damage caused by mining activities. See 30 U.S.C. § 1232(g). Some portion of the collected fees goes towards remedying past harms — principally reclaiming surface mines abandoned prior to 1977. See §§ 1232(g)(1), 1232(g)(3)(C), 1233(a)(1), and 1234. The balance of the collected fees goes to avoiding new mining-related harms — funding emergency reclamation projects, see §§ 1232(g)(3)(B) & 1240, subsidizing the costs of complying with the regulation incurred by certain small-scale producers, see §§ 1232(g)(3)(A) & 1257(c), and offsetting the expense of administering SMCRA itself, see § 1232(g)(3)(D). But for all SMCRA does, providing for the general revenue it does not. No portion of the assessment goes into the general bourse, or, for that matter, towards any purpose other than ameliorating harms caused by the mining industry. Cf. Hill v. Kemp,
Assessments of this sort, imposed on particular groups to offset the public welfare harms their activities cause, were (at least in 1921) well-recognized as an exercise of the sovereign’s regulatory, not taxing, authority. See Cooley, supra, § 28 (the police powers include the authority to levy fees on industries due to their “special relation to property ... or to business peculiarly troublesome or dangerous”); People v. Van Horn,
To be sure, for some of the time relevant to this litigation, the Secretary of the Interior was authorized to transfer the interest earned on the reclamation fees (and potentially a small amount of the fees themselves) to the United Mine Workers of America Combined Benefit Fund. See “Energy Policy Act of 1992,” Pub.L. 102-486, § 19143, 106 Stat. 2776, 3056. But even here the Secretary was permitted to do so only for the purpose of funding the pension benefits of retired miners — itself an effort to coordinate settlement of the industry’s collective liabilities, not to enhance the general revenue. Besides and what’s more, even if Congress had steered a modest portion of excess reclamation fees to other, completely unrelated projects, that
Under the plain meaning of § 1346(a)(1), then, SMCRA isn’t a revenue law. And its reclamation fee isn’t a tax. Accordingly, the district court had no jurisdiction under § 1346(a)(1) to hear Wyodak’s lawsuit disputing its SMCRA assessment, and Wyodak’s lawsuit should’ve been heard, if at all, only in the Court of Claims. For this reason, I join the majority in remanding this case to the district court with instructions to dismiss it.
. Arguably, "any penalty claimed to have been collected without authority” creates an additional route to jurisdiction, one that does not require a relationship to either “internal-revenue taxes” or "internal-revenue laws.” Even assuming as much, however, does not change the result, because at no point in this litigation has Wyodak asserted that the reclamation fee is a penalty collected without authority.
. Although the district court stated that “a plethora of decisions” had found SMCRA's coal reclamation fee to be a tax, in fact many of the cases the district court cited do not actually decide whether SMCRA's assessment is a tax or a fee. For example, United States v. Tri-No Enters., Inc. merely held that the reclamation fee was not a “civil fine, penalty, or forfeiture” for the purposes of a statute of limitations.