216
Opinion of the Court
Nierotko at all, considered it an exception to the general rule for measuring "wages" in a given year.13 Because the concern that animates Nierotko's treatment of backpay in the benefits context has no relevance to the tax side, supra, at 212-213, it makes no sense to attribute to Congress a desire for conformity not only with respect to the general rule for measuring "wages," but also with respect to Nierotko's backpay exception.
C
Were the Company to rely solely on arguments for symmetry in statutory construction, we would be inclined to conclude, given Nierotko's lack of concern with taxation, that the tax provisions themselves, informed by legislative purpose, require back wages to be taxed according to the year they are actually paid. But the Company has one more arrow in its quiver.
Apart from its arguments for symmetry, the Company contends that the Government's refusal to allocate back wages to the year they should have been paid creates in-13 Indeed, the contemporaneous understanding of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue was that the 1946 Amendments supplanted Nierotko's allocation rule for backpay. See Letter from Joseph D. Nunan, Jr., Commissioner of Internal Revenue, to Social Security Administration, Bureau of Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (Mar. 6, 1947) ("The Nierotko decision requiring your Agency to make an allocation of the back pay award to prior periods was rendered on the basis of the law in effect at that time. The Social Security Act Amendments of 1946, having been enacted subsequent to the date of the Nierotko decision, must be interpreted in the light of the language contained in such Amendments and the Congressional intent.") (available in Lodging for Respondent, Exh. F). Nevertheless, for benefits eligibility and calculation purposes, the Social Security Administration (SSA) by regulation continues to apply the Nierotko rule to "[b]ack pay under a statute," 20 CFR § 404.1242(b) (2000) (such backpay "is allocated to the periods of time in which it should have been paid if the employer had not violated the statute"), while declining to apply Nierotko to "[b]ack pay not under a statute," § 404.1242(c) ("This back pay cannot be allocated to prior periods of time but must be reported by the employer for the period in which it is paid.").
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