Cite as: 507 U. S. 447 (1993)
Thomas, J., dissenting
§ 6323(a), since the point of our choateness doctrine is to respect the validity of a competing lien where the lien has become certain as to the property subject thereto and the lienor need take no further action to secure his claim. Under this federal-law principle, the Bank's lien was sufficiently choate to be first in time.4
I acknowledge that our precedents do not provide the clearest answer to the question of after-acquired property. See ante, at 455. But the Court's parsimonious reading of Vermont undercuts the congressional purpose—expressed through repeated amendments to the tax lien provisions in the century since United States v. Snyder, 149 U. S. 210 (1893)—of "protect[ing] third persons against harsh application of the federal tax lien," Kennedy, The Relative Priority of the Federal Government: The Pernicious Career of the Inchoate and General Lien, 63 Yale L. J. 905, 922 (1954). The attachment requirement erodes the "preferred status" granted to judgment creditors by § 6323(a), and renders a choate judgment lien in after-acquired property subordinate
4 Even if the Court were correct that attachment is the determinative criterion of choateness, we would have a tie, since the federal lien "did not attach [to the after-acquired property] until the same instant the state lien attached." Ante, at 453. That being so, there is no persuasive reason for not adopting as a matter of federal law the well-recognized common-law rule of parity and giving the Bank an equal interest in the property. See 3 Powell ¶ 481[1]. Section 6323(a)'s requirement that the federal lien be "filed" to be effective may determine when the lien arises for general priority purposes, but the word "filed" provides no textual basis for concluding that a tie goes to the Government, and simply declaring that it does, see ante, at 453, does not make it so. The special exception in § 6323(c), which protects later-arising security interests that are based on certain preferred financing agreements, see ibid., does not imply that judgment creditors lose out. Indeed, § 6323(c) demonstrates that Congress has considered the question of later-arising property, and the absence of an analogous provision in § 6323(a) suggests that Congress was content to let the courts apply one of the existing background rules to determine the relative priority (or parity) of the federal lien as against competing judgment liens in after-acquired property.
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