278
Opinion of the Court
Both parties appealed the District Court's decision, the Government again claiming that its lien attached to the husband's interest in the entireties property. The Court of Appeals held that the prior panel's opinion was law of the case on that issue. 233 F. 3d 358, 363-369 (CA6 2000). It also affirmed the District Court's determination that the husband's mortgage payments were fraudulent. Id., at 369-375.
We granted certiorari to consider the Government's claim that respondent's husband had a separate interest in the entireties property to which the federal tax lien attached. 533 U. S. 976 (2001).
II
Whether the interests of respondent's husband in the property he held as a tenant by the entirety constitutes "property and rights to property" for the purposes of the federal tax lien statute, 26 U. S. C. § 6321, is ultimately a question of federal law. The answer to this federal question, however, largely depends upon state law. The federal tax lien statute itself "creates no property rights but merely attaches consequences, federally defined, to rights created under state law." United States v. Bess, 357 U. S. 51, 55 (1958); see also United States v. National Bank of Commerce, 472 U. S. 713, 722 (1985). Accordingly, "[w]e look initially to state law to determine what rights the taxpayer has in the property the Government seeks to reach, then to federal law to determine whether the taxpayer's state-delineated rights qualify as 'property' or 'rights to property' within the compass of the federal tax lien legislation." Drye v. United States, 528 U. S. 49, 58 (1999).
A common idiom describes property as a "bundle of sticks"—a collection of individual rights which, in certain combinations, constitute property. See B. Cardozo, Paradoxes of Legal Science 129 (1928) (reprint 2000); see also Dickman v. Commissioner, 465 U. S. 330, 336 (1984). State law determines only which sticks are in a person's bundle.
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