Cite as: 508 U. S. 152 (1993)
Opinion of the Court
nals and the Key West property constituted, under the income tax laws, sales of those properties to the Pension Trust. The Fourth Circuit, in Wood, supra, observed: "[W]e are aware of no instance when the term 'sale or exchange' has been used or interpreted not to include transfers of property in satisfaction of indebtedness." 955 F. 2d, at 913.
This logic applied in income tax cases is equally applicable under § 4975(c)(1)(A). The phrase "sale or exchange" had acquired a settled judicial and administrative interpretation over the course of a half century before Congress enacted in § 4975 the even broader statutory language of "any direct or indirect . . . sale or exchange." Congress presumptively was aware when it enacted § 4975 that the phrase "sale or exchange" consistently had been construed to include the transfer of property in satisfaction of a monetary obligation. See Albernaz v. United States, 450 U. S. 333, 340-343 (1981). It is a "normal rule of statutory construction," Sorenson v. Secretary of Treasury, 475 U. S. 851, 860 (1986), that "identical words used in different parts of the same act are intended to have the same meaning," Atlantic Cleaners & Dyers, Inc. v. United States, 286 U. S. 427, 433 (1932). Further, "the Code must be given 'as great an internal symmetry and consistency as its words permit.' " Commissioner v. Lester, 366 U. S. 299, 304 (1961). Accordingly, when we construe § 4975(c)(1)(A), it is proper to accept the already settled meaning of the phrase "sale or exchange."
Even if this phrase had not possessed a settled meaning, it still would be clear that § 4975(c)(1)(A) prohibits the transfer of property in satisfaction of a debt. Congress barred not merely a "sale or exchange." It prohibited something more, namely, "any direct or indirect . . . sale or exchange." The contribution of property in satisfaction of a funding obligation is at least both an indirect type of sale and a form of exchange, since the property is exchanged for diminution of the employer's funding obligation.
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