240
Opinion of the Court
tant consequence of treating a disclaimer as an ab initio defeasance is that the disclaimant's creditors are barred from reaching the disclaimed property. See, e. g., Gottstein v. Hedges, supra. 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. See supra, at 234-235. 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. And as we have already stated, supra, at 233, without the exception afforded in the Regulation,17 the gift tax statute provides a general rule of taxability for disclaimers such as Mrs. Irvine's.
IV
Presumably to ward off any attack on the federal gift tax resting on the possibility that its retroactive application would violate due process, see Untermyer v. Anderson, 276 U. S. 440 (1928), § 501(b) of the Act provided that it would "not apply to a transfer made on or before the date of the enactment of this Act [June 6, 1932]." Revenue Act of 1932, ch. 209, § 501(b), 47 Stat. 245. The same provision has in substance been carried forward to this day.18 Respondents argue that even if the Regulation applies, or taxation would
17 Respondents challenge the Regulation's validity only insofar as it would allegedly sanction a retroactive application of gift tax. See infra, at 241.
18 See 26 U. S. C. § 2502(b).
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