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of the property. Id. Practical and administrative concerns
dictated that we define the interested parties in view of State
relation-back laws.
Nonetheless, the U.S. Supreme Court has summarized the
broader policy concerning the relation-back doctrine in Federal
tax contexts as follows:
Cases like Jewett [v. Commissioner, 455 U.S. 305
(1982)] and this one illustrate as well as any why it
is that state property transfer rules do not translate
into federal taxation rules. Under state property
rules, an effective disclaimer of a testamentary gift
is generally treated as relating back to the moment of
the original transfer of the interest being disclaimed,
having the effect of canceling the transfer to the
disclaimant ab initio and substituting a single
transfer from the original donor to the beneficiary of
the disclaimer. Although a state-law right to disclaim
with such consequences might be thought to follow from
the common-law principle that a gift is a bilateral
transaction, requiring not only a donor’s intent to
give, but also a donee’s acceptance, state-law
tolerance for delay in disclaiming reflects a less
theoretical concern. An important consequence of
treating a disclaimer as an ab initio defeasance is
that the disclaimant’s creditors are barred from
reaching the disclaimed property. The ab initio
disclaimer thus operates as a legal fiction obviating a
more straightforward rule defeating the claims of a
disclaimant’s creditors in the property disclaimed.
The principles underlying the federal gift tax
treatment of disclaimers look to different objects,
however. As we have already stated, Congress enacted
the gift tax as a supplement to the estate tax and a
means of curbing estate tax avoidance. Since the
reasons for defeating a disclaimant’s creditors would
furnish no reasons for defeating the gift tax as well,
the Jewett Court was undoubtedly correct to hold that
Congress had not meant to incorporate state-law
fictions as touchstones of taxability when it enacted
the Act. Absent such a legal fiction, the federal gift
tax is not struck blind by a disclaimer. * * * [United
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