Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/13pdf/12-1408_6468.pdf
Page Number: 12

Cite as:  572 U. S. ____ (2014) 

9 

Opinion of the Court 

treated as if they were six feet tall does not imply that no
men are six feet tall.”  CSX Corp., 518 F. 3d, at 1342. 

In  the  last  of  its  textual  arguments,  Quality  Stores
draws attention to the boldface heading of §3402(o), which
states,  “Extension  of  withholding  to  certain  payments 
other than wages.”  It contends the heading declares that
the payments enumerated within §3402(o) are “other than 
wages.”  Captions, of course, can be “a useful aid in resolv-
ing” a statutory text’s “ambiguity.”  FTC v. Mandel Broth-
ers,  Inc.,  359  U.  S.  385,  388–389  (1959).  But  Quality
Stores cannot rely on the statutory heading to support its
argument  that  §3402(o),  without  ambiguity,  excludes  all
severance  payments  from  the  definition  of  wages.    The 
heading  states  that  withholding  is  extended  to  “certain
payments.”  This  falls  short  of  a  declaration  that  all  the 
payments listed in §3402(o) are not wages. 

Next, the regulatory background against which §3402(o)
was  enacted  illustrates  the  limited  nature  of  the  problem 
the provision was enacted to address.  For this purpose, it
is  instructive  to  concentrate  on  the  statutory  term  “sup-
plemental  unemployment  benefits,”  which  defines  the 
scope of §3402(o)’s income-tax withholding mandate. 

The  concept  of  SUBs  originated  in  labor  demands  for  a
guaranteed annual wage.  When it became clear this was 
“impractical in their industries, unions such as the Steel-
workers  and  the  United  Auto  Workers  transformed  their 
guaranteed  annual  wage  demands  into  proposals  to  sup-
plement existing unemployment compensation programs.” 
Coffy v. Republic Steel Corp., 447 U. S. 191, 200 (1980).  A 
SUB  plan,  as  originally  conceived,  offered  “second-level 
protection  against  layoff ”  by  supplementing  unemploy-
ment benefits offered by the States.  Ibid. 

In  the  1950’s,  major  American  employers  such  as  Ford
Motor Company adopted SUB plans of this type, agreeing 
to  fund  trusts  that  would  provide  SUBs  to  terminated 
employees.    For  example,  Ford’s  contract  with  employees