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6 

UNITED STATES v. QUALITY STORES, INC. 

Opinion of the Court 

employees who have been terminated. 

A  specific  exemption  under  FICA  for  certain  termina-
tion-related  payments  reinforces  the  conclusion  that  the
payments  in  question  are  well  within  the  definition  of 
wages. 
Section  3121(a)(13)(A)  exempts  from  taxable 
wages any severance payments made “because of . . . retire-
ment  for  disability.”  That  exemption  would  be  unneces-
sary  were  severance  payments  in  general  not  within 
FICA’s definition of “wages.”  Cf. American Bank & Trust 
Co. v. Dallas County, 463 U. S. 855, 864 (1983) (declining 
to  read  a  statute  in  a  manner  that  would  cause  “spe- 
cific exemptions” to be “superfluous”).  FICA’s definitional 
section,  moreover,  provides  a  lengthy  list  of  specific  ex-
emptions from the definition of wages.  For example, FICA 
exempts  from  wages  payments  on  account  of  disability 
caused  by  sickness  or  accident,  cash  payments  made  for
domestic  service  in  a  private  home  under  a  certain
amount,  and  cash  tips  less  than  a  certain  amount.    See 
§§3121(a)(2)(A),  (7)(B),  (12)(B).    The  specificity  of  these 
exemptions  reinforces  the  broad  nature  of  FICA’s  defini-
tion of wages.

FICA’s statutory history sheds further light on the text 
of  §3121,  which  defines  the  term  “wages.”    FICA  was 
originally enacted in Title VIII of the Social Security Act, 
49  Stat.  636.    (In  1939,  Title  VIII  was  transferred  to  the 
Internal Revenue Code and became FICA.  53 Stat. 1387.) 
Title  VIII  contained,  in  substance,  definitions  of  “wages”
and  “employment”  identical  to  those  FICA  now  provides.
See  §811(a),  49  Stat.  639;  §811(b),  ibid.    With  respect  to
the Social Security Act, in 1936 the Treasury Department 
promulgated a regulation stating that the statutory defini-
tion of “wages” included “dismissal pay.”  Bureau of Inter-
nal  Revenue,  Employees’  Tax  and  the  Employers’  Tax 
Under  Title  VIII  of  the  Social  Security  Act,  1  Fed.  Reg. 
1764, 1769 (1936).  Congress responded a few years later,
in  1939,  by  creating  an  exception  from  “wages”  for