Cite as: 535 U. S. 274 (2002)
Thomas, J., dissenting
suggest that the federal tax lien attaches to particular "rights to property" held individually by Mr. Craft. Rather, borrowing the metaphor of "property as a 'bundle of sticks'— a collection of individual rights which, in certain combinations, constitute property," ante, at 278, the Court proposes that so long as sufficient "sticks" in the bundle of "rights to property" "belong to" a delinquent taxpayer, the lien can attach as if the property itself belonged to the taxpayer, ante, at 285.
This amorphous construct ignores the primacy of state law in defining property interests, eviscerates the statutory distinction between "property" and "rights to property" drawn by § 6321, and conflicts with an unbroken line of authority from this Court, the lower courts, and the IRS. Its application is all the more unsupportable in this case because, in my view, it is highly unlikely that the limited individual "rights to property" recognized in a tenancy by the entirety under Michigan law are themselves subject to lien. I would affirm the Court of Appeals and hold that Mr. Craft did not have "property" or "rights to property" to which the federal tax lien could attach.
I
Title 26 U. S. C. § 6321 provides that a federal tax lien attaches to "all property and rights to property, whether real or personal, belonging to" a delinquent taxpayer. It is un-contested that a federal tax lien 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) (construing the 1939 version of the federal tax lien statute). Consequently, the Government's lien under § 6321 "cannot extend beyond the property interests held by the delinquent taxpayer," United States v. Rodgers, 461 U. S. 677, 690-691 (1983), under state law. Before today, no one disputed that the IRS, by operation of § 6321, "steps into the taxpayer's shoes," and has the same rights as the taxpayer in property or rights to property sub-
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