United States Court of Appeals

For the Eighth Circuit

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No. 16-3574

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Union Pacific Railroad Company, in its own capacity and in its capacity as

successor to Union Pacific Railroad Company

lllllllllllllllllllll Plaintiff - Appellant

v.

United States of America

lllllllllllllllllllll Defendant - Appellee

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Association of American Railroads

lllllllllllllllllllllAmicus on Behalf of Appellant(s)

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Appeal from United States District Court 

for the District of Nebraska - Omaha

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 Submitted: June 6, 2017

 Filed: August 1, 2017

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Before WOLLMAN, ARNOLD, and GRUENDER, Circuit Judges.

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ARNOLD, Circuit Judge.
The Union Pacific Railroad Company seeks a refund of about $75 million in

taxes that it paid the federal government from 1991 to 2007 under the Railroad

Retirement Tax Act. UP maintainsthat the RRTA did not require it to pay taxes when

it paid employees in stock or made what are called ratification payments to unionmember employees. The district court rejected the refund requests and granted

summary judgment to the government. We reverse and remand.

Anyone who has earned a paycheck in this country is probably familiar with

the Federal Insurance Contributions Act, if not by name then by effect. The FICA

requires employers to withhold a tax equal to a percentage of an employee's wages.

26 U.S.C. § 3102(a). In addition, an employer must pay a share of the tax. 26 U.S.C.

§ 3111(a). These taxes fund social-security and medicare benefits. See United States

v. Quality Stores, Inc., 134 S. Ct. 1395, 1399 (2014).

Rail carriers and their employees are notsubject to FICA taxation; instead, they

pay a somewhat different tax under the RRTA. See 26 U.S.C. §§ 3201, 3221(a)–(b).

As its name suggests, RRTA taxes fund benefits under the Railroad Retirement Act.

See BNSF Ry. Co. v. United States, 775 F.3d 743, 750 (5th Cir. 2015); 45 U.S.C.

§§ 231–231v. Congress first enacted versions of the RRTA and the RRA in 1934 to

stabilize the railroad industry's private pension plans during the Depression. Courts

struck down that statute, see R.R. Ret. Bd. v. Alton R.R. Co., 295 U.S. 330, 362

(1935), and its 1935 replacement,see Alton R.R. Co. v. R.R. Ret. Bd., 16 F. Supp. 955,

958–59 (D.D.C. 1936), but Congress's 1937 version survived. Today, the RRA and

RRTA resemble both a social welfare plan and a private pension program; one tier

of benefits and taxes corresponds to what one would expect to receive from and to

pay for social security and medicare, while the other tier ties benefits to earnings and

career service. Hisquierdo v. Hisquierdo, 439 U.S. 572, 574–75 (1979).

UP is a rail carrier that is obligated to pay RRTA taxes. During the time at

issue, UP paid employees in company stock in addition to a monetary salary. UP paid

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RRTA taxes on the stock payments, but now it asks the government to refund the

money because, it says, the RRTA did not require it to make those payments. The

government disagrees, arguing that employers who pay employment taxes under the

FICA are obligated to pay taxes on stock payments, and the InternalRevenue Service,

by regulation, treats the FICA and the RRTA the same on this matter. See 26 C.F.R.

§ 31.3231(e)–1(a)(1). The district court agreed with the government's interpretation

of the statutes and regulations at issue, so it granted summary judgment in the

government'sfavor and denied UP's motion forsummary judgment, which judgments

we review de novo. Dunham v. Portfolio Recovery Assocs., LLC, 663 F.3d 997, 1000

(8th Cir. 2011).

Generally, when Congress authorizes an agency to issue regulations

interpreting a statute that the agency enforces, we defer to the agency's interpretation

of an ambiguous statute so long as the interpretation is reasonable. We must first

determine whether the statute is ambiguous, and if not, we apply the statute as

written; if it is ambiguous, we must decide whether the agency's interpretation is

reasonable. Encino Motorcars, LLC v. Navarro, 136 S. Ct. 2117, 2124–25 (2016).

Beginning, as we must, with the statutory text, see Henson v. Santander

Consumer USA Inc., 137 S. Ct. 1718, 1721 (2017), we see that the RRTA tax is based

on an employee's "compensation," which is generally defined as "any form of money

remuneration paid to an individual for services rendered as an employee to one or

more employers." 26 U.S.C. § 3231(e)(1). On the other hand, the FICA levies a tax

on an employee's "wages," which are "all remuneration for employment, including

the cash value of all remuneration (including benefits) paid in any medium other than

cash." 26 U.S.C. § 3121(a). It seems to us that the FICA sweeps more broadly than

the RRTA: The FICA expressly mentions the cash value of remuneration not paid in

cash,such as payments in property, whereas the RRTA does not. And the determiner

"all" qualifies "remuneration" in the FICA definition, appearing to make

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"remuneration" unlimited, whereasthe word "money" qualifies "remuneration" in the

RRTA.

But the parties dispute why the word "money" precedes "remuneration" in the

RRTA. UP maintains that "money" takes on the ordinary meaning it had at the time

the RRTA was enacted since the RRTA does not define it. Citing a handful of

dictionaries, UP argues that "money" meant "a medium of exchange." UP notes that

"money" can have a more restrictive meaning, such asreferring only to cash or coins,

but since the phrase "any form of" precedes the word "money," then it seems that

Congressintended the RRTA to reach remuneration paid in anymediumof exchange,

not just cash or coins. To the government and the district court, on the other hand,

"money" does not do any work; it is a superfluity, akin to its impotence in phrases

like "money judgment" or "money damages." Alternatively, they point out, citing

their own handful of dictionaries, that "money" can have an expansive meaning

relating to capital or finance in general, especially when "money" does the work of

an adjective.

We think that UP has the better argument. First, we are not convinced that the

expansive definition of "money" that the government advances reflects the ordinary,

common meaning of that term. See Perrin v. United States, 444 U.S. 37, 42 (1979).

In fact, one of the dictionaries on which the government relies notes that in its

"popularsense, 'money' means any currency, tokens, bank-notes, or other circulating

medium in general use as the representative of value." See Black's Law Dictionary

1200 (3d ed. 1933). A number of contemporary legal authorities agree. UP points to

an instructive case decided near the time that the RRTA was enacted in which a

testatrix left her "money" to one person and her personal property to another. In re

Boyle's Estate, 37 P.2d 841, 841 (Cal. Dist. Ct. App. 1934). The trial court awarded

stock that the decedent had owned to the legatee of the "money." The appeals court

reversed, noting that "[t]here is no doubt that the word 'money' when taken in its

ordinary and grammatical sense does not include corporate stocks," and nothing

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indicated that "money" was used "in any sense other than its ordinary and accepted

meaning." Id. at 842. The court explicitly considered broader definitions of money

but did not apply them. Our court, moreover, explained during that same era that

"[t]he sole function of money is as a necessary medium of exchange in all commerce

which has passed the barter stage," Emery Bird Thayer Dry Goods Co. v. Williams,

107 F.2d 965, 971 (8th Cir. 1939), which seems inconsistent with the notion that

"money" in its ordinary context means any property whatsoever. More recently, the

United States Tax Court said:

A final problem we have with extending the definition of "money

received" in section 1001(b) to encompass preferred stock is its great

dissimilarity to money in any practical sense. Assuming without

deciding that the term includes not only actual money, but "money

equivalents" as well, it is difficult to see how stock of any sort could

reasonably be viewed as such.

Nestle Holdings, Inc. v. C.I.R., 94 T.C. 803, 814–15 (T.C. 1990). In short, "[t]here are

numerous ways to define 'moneys,' but dictionaries mostly agree that the term refers

to a generally accepted medium of exchange." In re Hokulani Square, Inc., 776 F.3d

1083, 1085–86 (9th Cir. 2015).

Second, a regulation adopted about four months after the passage of the RRTA

explained: "The term compensation means all remuneration in money, or in

something which may be used in lieu of money (scrip and merchandise orders, for

example), which is earned by an individual for services performed as an employee."

Employers' Tax, Employees' Tax, and Employee Representatives' Tax Under the

Carriers Taxing Act of 1937, 2 Fed. Reg. 2198, 2202 (Oct. 15, 1937) (codified at 26

C.F.R. § 410.5 (1938)). If money meant either nothing or all property, as the

government asserts, then there would be no reason to note that scrip or merchandise

orders also constituted "compensation." Those examples are illuminating only if

"money" has a more restrictive meaning.

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Third, consider the statutory context. Congress enacted the FICA's predecessor

in 1935—the same year when Congress made its second attempt in passing the

RRTA. In the 1934, 1935, and 1937 versions of the RRTA, Congress chose a

different word—compensation—for the RRTA from the one it chose for the

FICA—wages. These differences in the relevant terms call to mind the oft-cited

principle that differences in statutory language convey differences in meaning.

Henson, 137 S. Ct. at 1723. And when Congress does not adopt obvious alternative

language, the natural implication is that it did not intend the alternative. Advocate

Health Care Network v. Stapleton, 137 S. Ct. 1652, 1659 (2017). Congress has,

moreover, preserved the distinction. In defining the term "successor employers," the

RRTA adopts the FICA definition except that Congress substitutes "compensation"

(as the RRTA defines it) where the FICA says "remuneration." See 26 U.S.C.

§ 3231(e)(2)(C)(ii)—(iii). We think that Congress did this because "compensation,"

which includes only money remuneration, is necessarily a subset of "remuneration,"

whichCongress usesin defining FICA "wages." It would make no sense for Congress

to swap these terms if "compensation" meant the same thing as "remuneration" and

"wages" under the FICA. And finally, the government and the district court propose

an interpretation that raises a red flag: When interpreting a statute, courts typically

do not presume that Congress has used superfluous words in its enactments.

Stapleton, 137 S. Ct. at 1659.

The government insists, however, that various non-cash exemptions from the

general definition of "compensation" show that "money remuneration" means

something broader than just mediums of exchange or else the exemptions would be

superfluous. Why would Congress, the argument goes, create exemptions for

non-cash payments if the general definition already excluded those payments? The

Fifth Circuit relied on this argument to conclude that the statute is at least ambiguous.

See BNSF, 775 F.3d at 754–55. The government emphasizes that the Supreme Court

took a similar analytical tack when interpreting the term "wages" under the FICA, so

we should do so here. See Quality Stores, 134 S. Ct. at 1400.

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We have no quarrel in general with the approach that the government suggests,

and we recognize that the Supreme Court has used it—but in a different context. We

decline to give it any weight here because it rests on a false premise in the RRTA

context. None of the exemptions that the government identifies will be rendered

superfluous under our reading of the statute because each can include payments

consistent with a medium-of-exchange interpretation of "money." Take, for example,

the exemption for remuneration in "qualified stock options," 26 U.S.C. § 3231(e)(12),

that the government relies on as illustrating its point. That exemption says that

"compensation" does not include any remuneration on account of a transfer or

disposition of a share of stock as the result of an exercise of certain qualified stock

options. (The parties here, by the way, agree that the options in question are nonqualified stock options.) The government contends that if, as UP suggests, "money

remuneration" includes only remuneration paid in mediums of exchange like cash,

then the exemption for qualified stock options adds nothing and is therefore

superfluous. But what this argument omits is that cash payments sometimes

accompany the exercise of a stock option, as, for instance, when the number ofshares

an employee can acquire at exercise is not a whole number, or if the remunerative

program under which the option was transferred gives employees bonuses or

additional compensation, in cash or other property, at the time of exercise. The IRS

recognizes these possibilities. See 26 C.F.R. § 1.422–5(c). The government does not

dispute UP's contention that money is sometimes received when a qualified stock

option is exercised; instead, it questions why Congress would not also explicitly

exempt non-qualified stock options. We think it is Congress's prerogative to give

preferential tax treatment to certain kinds of options. The point is that the exemption

for qualified stock options still has meaning even if we give "money" its ordinary

meaning.

The government likewise calls our attention to the exemption for health and

disability insurance, see 26 U.S.C. § 3231(e)(1)(i), but this exemption excludes from

compensation "any payment . . . made to, or on behalf of, an employee . . . on account

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ofsickness or accident disability ormedical or hospitalization expensesin connection

with sickness or accident disability or death." Since this exemption covers cash

payments made to an employee, it would not be rendered superfluous by interpreting

"money" to mean mediums of exchange.

Another provision of relevance exempts "the value of meals or lodging

furnished by or on behalf of the employer if at the time of such furnishing it is

reasonable to believe that the employee will be able to exclude such items from

income under section 119." See 26 U.S.C. § 3231(e)(9). Section 119 isthe income-tax

section relating to meals and lodging. It contains a subsection relating to money

payments that an employee must pay an employer for employer-provided meals even

if the employee declinesthe meal. See 26 U.S.C. § 119(b)(3). Section 119(b)(3) treats

those circumstances for tax purposes as if the employer had never paid the employee

that money. Because it is excludable under § 119, the cash payment to the employee

is also excludable under the RRTA, so this exemption would retain meaning.

We consider, finally, the fringe-benefit exemption in § 3231(e)(5), which

exempts "any benefit provided to or on behalf of an employee if at the time such

benefit is provided it is reasonable to believe that the employee will be able to

exclude such benefits from income under section 74(c), 108(f)(4), 117, or 132." But

each of those sections includes a medium-of-exchange component. Section 74(c)

excludes employee-achievement awards from income, but these awards can include

some gift certificates, see 26 C.F.R. § 1.274–3(b)(2), which fall within the mediumof-exchange definition of money. Section 108(f)(4) is a loan-repayment program,

which can include payments in mediums of exchange like cash. Section 117 deals

with scholarships, which can involve cash payments. Finally, § 132 covers certain

other fringe benefits, some of which involve cash payments, like moving-expense

reimbursement and other cash reimbursements. In short, this exemption would still

mean something under UP's definition of "money remuneration" because each of the

cited sections includes a medium-of-exchange component. We are therefore not

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convinced that UP's interpretation of "money" would mean that these exemptions

would do no work.

The government points out that the FICA contains some of the same

exemptions verbatim, presumably implying that the exemptions must have the same

breadth in each of the tax schemes. We do not understand why this is necessarily so.

The exemptions may apply to more transactions under the FICA, but that does not

mean that they lack meaning under our interpretation of the RRTA. And though the

payments by mediums of exchange may not be frequent in the circumstancesto which

those exemptions apply compared to payments made in other property, the point is

that no exemption is empty of meaning.

Another reason that the exemptions do not do much to support the

government's view is that they can be made to indicate that "money" is not as broad

as the government suggests. The RRTA exempts cash tips under $20. 26 U.S.C.

§ 3231(e)(3). The FICA, on the other hand, exempts "tips paid in any medium other

than cash" and cash tips under $20. 26 U.S.C. § 3121(a)(12). It is telling that

Congress did not similarly exclude "tips paid in any medium other than cash" in the

RRTA because this difference suggeststhat the general definition of "compensation"

already excluded such tips.

Perhaps most important, Congress enacted the exemptions years after enacting

the general definition of compensation. Under the government's theory, these

later-adopted exemptions would impliedly repeal our reading of the original

definition of "money remuneration."We do not favor a construction that later-enacted

statutes impliedly repeal an earlier one unless the intention of Congress to repeal is

clear and manifest. Nat'l Ass'n of Home Builders v. Defs. of Wildlife, 551 U.S. 644,

662 (2007). The later statute must expressly contradict the earlier one, unless such a

construction is absolutely necessary to give the words of the later statute any

meaning. As just explained, the later-enacted exemptions have meaning, and

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Congress never announced an intention to alter the original scope of "money

remuneration" to something beyond a medium of exchange. We keep in mind what

Justice Cardozo said about implied repeals: "We cannot believe that in this process

of amendment the word 'seamen' lost the broad meaning that it had in the law to be

amended, and was narrowed by the exclusion of a particular species of seamen, i.e.,

seamen having command. The change istoo sudden to be accepted asintended unless

unmistakably declared." Warner v. Goltra, 293 U.S. 155, 159 (1934). In short, we

disagree that the statutory exemptions to the definition of "compensation" reveal

much, if anything, about the meaning of "money remuneration."

We recognize that one of our sister circuits recently held that paymentsin stock

are a form of money remuneration because stock has become practically equivalent

to cash: "just as today 100 dimes is the exact monetary equivalent of a $10 bill," the

court asserted, "so is a stock certificate that can be sold for $10." Wis. Cent. Ltd. v.

United States, 856 F.3d 490, 492 (7th Cir. 2017). We respectfully disagree. Even

stocks with readily ascertainable share prices are not "money" because they are not

mediums of exchange. One cannot pay for produce at the local grocery store with

stock. Like any type of property, stock does have cash value and can be exchanged

for money, but we do not think it is a medium of exchange. The Seventh Circuit

expressly rejected the idea that its holding rendered paymentsin any form of property

taxable under the RRTA, noting that, for example, an employer would not have to pay

RRTA taxes on a birthday cake. But as the dissent in that case recognized, see id. at

494 n.1, even a cake has market value and can be exchanged for money. We discern

no limiting principle in the government's expansive interpretation that would prevent

all property from being swept into the RRTA's text , so we decline to follow the

Seventh Circuit's lead.

Finally, the government maintains that we should interpret the RRTA to reach

as far as the FICA because the two statutes share a similar purpose. Vague notions

about the statutes' purposes, however, cannot be used to override their actual texts.

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See Henson, 137 S. Ct. at 1725. We also decline to wade into the policy pros and cons

of construing the statutes differently or for not taxing remuneration in stock under the

RRTA. Even if we thought that the government had the better of the policy

arguments, we cannot look past the RRTA's plain language. See SandozInc. v. Amgen

Inc., 137 S. Ct. 1664, 1678 (2017). So we refuse the government's invitation to

remove "money" from the books, either by erasing it entirely or by stretching it so

wide that it encompasses everything, and suggest that the government is better off

seeking an amendment of the statute from Congress.

Because we conclude that the RRTA unambiguously does notrequire payment

of RRTA taxes on remuneration in stock, we owe no deference to the IRS'sregulation

defining the RRTA's "compensation" and the FICA's "wages" identically, and we

reverse the district court's grant of summary judgment to the government and denial

of UP's motion for summary judgment on this issue.

We turn now to the other broad issue in the case and consider whether the

RRTA required UP to pay taxes when it made so-called ratification payments to

employees when their unions ratified collective bargaining agreements. These

payments were intended to encourage unions to ratify collective bargaining

agreements; they typically required the recipient to be employed with UP on a certain

date, and the amount paid out was tied to the number of hours that the employee had

worked the previous year.

Everyone agrees that the ratification payments are "money remuneration." UP

argues, though, that no tax is due under the RRTA because these payments are not

"for services rendered" by the employee. See 26 U.S.C. § 3221(a)–(b). The RRTA

says that a person "is in the service of an employer" if that person "is subject to the

continuing authority of the employer to supervise and direct the manner of rendition

of his service," "is rendering professional or technical services and is integrated into

the staff of the employer," or "is rendering, on the property used in the employer's

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operations, other personal services the rendition of which is integrated into the

employer's operations." 26 U.S.C. § 3231(d)(1). The district court rejected UP's

argument withoutreferring to thisstatute; it drew, instead, fromQuality Stores, where

the Supreme Court interpreted the FICA as applying to wages paid for "not only work

actually done but the entire employer-employee relationship for which compensation

is paid." 134 S. Ct. at 1400.

We disagree with the district court's approach because instead of taxing

payment for "services," the FICA taxes payment for "employment," which is defined

broadly as "any service, of whatever nature, performed . . . by an employee for the

person employing him." 26 U.S.C. § 3121(b). Transplanting the FICA's definition

into the RRTA disregards the RRTA's focus on the authority and control that an

employer exercises over an employee in determining whether the employee is

performing a "service."

We conclude that the ratification payments were not made to employees for

services rendered to UP because UP does not exercise control over whether a union

ratifies a collective bargaining agreement. Indeed, ratification is a union activity that

theRailway Labor Act protects from employer interference since that law is designed

"to provide for the complete independence of carriers and of employees in the matter

of self-organization." 45 U.S.C. § 151a(3).

The government also emphasizesthat UP made the ratification payments from

its payroll, which, it maintains, means they were "for servicesrendered." It istrue that

payroll payments are presumed to be compensation for services rendered. 26 C.F.R.

§ 31.3231(e)–(1)(a)(2). If the RRTA covered every payment that an employer made

to an employee, then the payroll presumption would effectively be irrebuttable

despite the regulation's admonition that it is not, and here UP has rebutted the

presumption. First, because the unions' members were employed by several

companies, UP simply used its payroll department to determine which union members

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actually worked at UP rather than for a different company. UP further explained that

its payroll department, unlike its accounts-payable department, wasset up to withhold

income taxes on the ratification payments.

The district court therefore erred in granting the government's motion for

summary judgment and denying UP's motion for summary judgment because the

RRTA did not require UP to pay taxes when it paid employees in stock or made

ratification payments to them.

Reversed and remanded.

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