Task: songer_genresp1

What follows is an opinion from a United States Court of Appeals.
Intervenors who participated as parties at the courts of appeals should be counted as either appellants or respondents when it can be determined whose position they supported. For example, if there were two plaintiffs who lost in district court, appealed, and were joined by four intervenors who also asked the court of appeals to reverse the district court, the number of appellants should be coded as six.
In some cases there is some confusion over who should be listed as the appellant and who as the respondent. This confusion is primarily the result of the presence of multiple docket numbers consolidated into a single appeal that is disposed of by a single opinion. Most frequently, this occurs when there are cross appeals and/or when one litigant sued (or was sued by) multiple litigants that were originally filed in district court as separate actions. The coding rule followed in such cases should be to go strictly by the designation provided in the title of the case. The first person listed in the title as the appellant should be coded as the appellant even if they subsequently appeared in a second docket number as the respondent and regardless of who was characterized as the appellant in the opinion.
To clarify the coding conventions, consider the following hypothetical case in which the US Justice Department sues a labor union to strike down a racially discriminatory seniority system and the corporation (siding with the position of its union) simultaneously sues the government to get an injunction to block enforcement of the relevant civil rights law. From a district court decision that consolidated the two suits and declared the seniority system illegal but refused to impose financial penalties on the union, the corporation appeals and the government and union file cross appeals from the decision in the suit brought by the government. Assume the case was listed in the Federal Reporter as follows:
United States of America,
Plaintiff, Appellant
v
International Brotherhood of Widget Workers,AFL-CIO
Defendant, Appellee.
International Brotherhood of Widget Workers,AFL-CIO
Defendants, Cross-appellants
v
United States of America.
Widgets, Inc. & Susan Kuersten Sheehan, President & Chairman
of the Board
Plaintiff, Appellants,
v
United States of America,
Defendant, Appellee.
This case should be coded as follows:Appellant = United States, Respondents = International Brotherhood of Widget Workers Widgets, Inc., Total number of appellants = 1, Number of appellants that fall into the category "the federal government, its agencies, and officials" = 1, Total number of respondents = 3, Number of respondents that fall into the category "private business and its executives" = 2, Number of respondents that fall into the category "groups and associations" = 1.
When coding the detailed nature of participants, use your personal knowledge about the participants, if you are completely confident of the accuracy of your knowledge, even if the specific information is not in the opinion. For example, if "IBM" is listed as the appellant it could be classified as "clearly national or international in scope" even if the opinion did not indicate the scope of the business. 
Your task is to determine the nature of the first listed respondent.

ANDERSON, Circuit Judge:
This appeal presents the narrow issue of whether a tax is “paid” at the time the taxpayer’s real property is seized by the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) for collection of the tax or at the time of the sale of such property. We conclude that the tax is not “paid” until the seized property is sold.
I. FACTS
On March 4, 1981 and October 16, 1981, the IRS filed tax liens in the total amount of $3006.61 against two parcels of real property owned by appellants Dona and Joann Sly. The tax deficiency was from appellants’ 1976 tax year. On March 12, 1982, the IRS filed a notice of levy on the real property and on April 19, 1982, filed a notice of seizure.
The Slys filed a refund claim on June 7, 1982. The IRS made two unsuccessful attempts to sell the property and thereafter determined that its value was insufficient to justify the cost of a sale. Consequently, the IRS returned the real property to the Slys on August 3, 1982. The IRS denied the Slys’ refund claim on October 26, 1983.
The Slys’ outstanding tax liability was satisfied in full on March 25, 1983, following the IRS’ seizure and sale of the Slys’ automobile. The Slys then filed an amended refund claim on April 26, 1985, which the IRS denied on August 27, 1985. The Slys commenced this action for a refund on October 25, 1985, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama.
At trial, the court granted a directed verdict in the government’s favor. The basis for the court’s decision was that neither of the Slys’ refund claims was filed within the applicable statute of limitations. 26 U.S.C. § 6511. Section 6511 requires that a taxpayer must file a refund claim either within three years following the date on which the return is filed or within two years after the tax is paid.
The Slys assert that the tax was “paid” when the real property was seized on April 19, 1982; and therefore that their June 7, 1982 claim, filed less than two months after the seizure, was timely. The district court concluded, however, that seizure of property did not constitute payment of the tax and that payment was not made until the Slys’ automobile was seized and sold on March 25, 1983. Consequently, the Slys’ initial refund claim, filed on June 7, 1982, was premature and their second claim, filed on June 26, 1985, was outside the two-year statute of limitations by one month.
II. DISCUSSION
The sole issue raised on appeal is whether seizure of the Slys’ real property constitutes payment of the tax for the purposes of triggering the two-year statute of limitations of 26 U.S.C. § 6511(a). We conclude that a tax is not “paid” until the seized property is sold.
This court has never explicitly addressed this issue. However, in Clark v. Campbell, 501 F.2d 108, 126 (5th Cir.1974), the former Fifth Circuit, in anther context, implied that a tax is not “paid” until property is seized, sold, and the proceeds applied to the tax liability. Accord Kabbaby v. Richardson, 520 F.2d 334, 335 n. 8 (5th Cir.1975) (“We indicated in Clark that seizure does not equal payment.”).
The Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Whiting Pools, Inc., 462 U.S. 198, 103 S.Ct. 2309, 76 L.Ed.2d 515 (1983), also supports our conclusion that seizure does not constitute payment. The issue in Whiting was whether property seized by the IRS prior to the taxpayer’s declaration of Chapter 11 bankruptcy was part of the reorganization estate and thereby subject to the automatic stay provisions of the Bankruptcy Code which prohibited sale or disposition of the reorganization estate’s assets by a secured creditor. The court concluded that because the IRS’ seizure of property did not divest the taxpayer of his ownership of that property, the IRS was subject to the bankruptcy stay and could not sell the seized property to satisfy the tax liability. The court noted that ownership of the seized property did not transfer to the IRS until the property was sold at a tax sale. 462 U.S. at 209-12, 103 S.Ct. at 2316-17.
Period of limitation on filing claim. Claim for credit or refund of an overpayment of any tax imposed by this Title in respect of which the taxpayer is required to file a return shall be filed by the taxpayer within three years from the time the return was filed or two years from the time the tax was paid, whichever of such periods expires the later....
By analogy, if ownership of property is not transferred from the taxpayer to the IRS when the latter seizes property pursuant to a tax lien and levy, it is impossible for the seizure to constitute payment. Payment only could occur when the IRS becomes the “owner” of the property, which under Whiting does not occur until the property is sold. Consequently, “payment” of a tax is concurrent with the IRS’ sale — not its seizure — of a taxpayer’s property.
Our conclusion also is supported by policy considerations. The rule urged by the taxpayer here would introduce unnecessary uncertainty into an area where certainty is important. Unless there is a measure of certainty and predictability surrounding the two-year time period for filing a claim for refund, unwary taxpayers will fall into the trap of having the time period expire and be barred by the statute of limitations. Because the precise value of property seized often will be uncertain at the time of seizure, it will often be unclear whether such value equals the full amount of the tax due. Thus, it would be difficult for the taxpayer to know whether the tax has been paid in full and therefore whether the two-year time for claiming the refund has been triggered.
For the foregoing reasons, the decision of the district court is
AFFIRMED.
. The parties agree that the three-year statute of limitations expired before the Slys’ initial claim was filed. They filed their 1976 tax return on April 11, 1977, thus the statute of limitations expired on April 11, 1980. Their first refund claim was not filed until June 7, 1982.
. Section 6511(a) provides as follows:
. The Slys’ argument is premised on the assumption, which we must accept in this directed verdict posture, that the jury reasonably could have concluded that the value of the real property on the seizure date was greater than or equal to the tax liability so that the tax would have been paid in full.
. This case was decided prior to the close of business on September 30, 1981, and is binding precedent under Bonner v. City of Prichard, 661 F.2d 1206, 1209 (11th Cir.1981).
. Also, the taxpayer's position would create an administrative problem. The IRS cannot know how much to credit the deficiency owed by the taxpayer until the sale fixes the value of the amount to be credited to the tax.

Question: What is the nature of the first listed respondent?
A. private business (including criminal enterprises)
B. private organization or association
C. federal government (including DC)
D. sub-state government (e.g., county, local, special district)
E. state government (includes territories & commonwealths)
F. government - level not ascertained
G. natural person (excludes persons named in their official capacity or who appear because of a role in a private organization)
H. miscellaneous
I. not ascertained
Answer:

Answer: C