Cite as: 535 U. S. 43 (2002)
Opinion of the Court
riod of disability tolled the three-year lookback period when the Youngs filed their Chapter 7 petition.
C
Petitioners invoke several statutory provisions which they claim display an intent to preclude tolling here. First they point to § 523(b), which, they believe, explicitly permits discharge in a Chapter 7 proceeding of certain debts that were nondischargeable (as this tax debt was) in a prior Chapter 13 proceeding. Petitioners misread the provision. Section 523(b) declares that
"a debt that was excepted from discharge under subsection (a)(1), (a)(3), or (a)(8) of this section . . . in a prior case concerning the debtor . . . is dischargeable in a case under this title unless, by the terms of subsection (a) of this section, such debt is not dischargeable in the case under this title." (Emphasis added.)
The phrase "excepted from discharge" in this provision is not synonymous (as petitioners would have it) with "nondis-chargeable." It envisions a prior bankruptcy proceeding that progressed to the discharge stage, from which discharge a particular debt was actually "excepted." It thus has no application to the present case; and even if it did, the very same arguments in favor of tolling that we have found persuasive with regard to § 507 would apply to § 523 as well. One might perhaps have expected an explicit tolling provision in § 523(b) if that subsection applied only to those debts "excepted from discharge" in the earlier proceeding that were subject to the three-year lookback—but in fact it also applies to excepted debts (see § 523(a)(3)) that were subject to no limitations period. And even the need for tolling as to debts that were subject to the three-year lookback is minimal, since a separate provision of the Code, § 727(a)(9), constrains successive discharges under Chapters 13 and 7: Generally speaking, six years must elapse between filing of the
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