369 Opinion of the Court. infra, p. 400. Apparently this story was published shortly thereafter. August 12, 1941, Curtis, through the same agent, paid the respondent $40,000 for the "North American (including Canadian) serial rights" to respondent's novel entitled "Money in the Bank." The agreement was in the form used by Curtis in 1938.3 The evidence does not state that this story was published but it shows that Curtis, pursuant to its agreements, took out a United States copyright on each of the respective stories named in the foregoing agreements. After each story's serial publication, Curtis reassigned to the respondent, on the latter's demand, all rights in and to the story excepting those rights which the respondent expressly had agreed that Curtis was to retain. The respective sums were thus paid to the respondent, in advance and in full, for the serial or book rights which he had made available. For United States income tax purposes, the respondent's literary agent, or some other withholding agent, withheld from the respondent, or from his wife as his assignee, a part of each payment. In 1944 the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, petitioner herein, gave the respondent notice of tax deficiencies assessed against him for the taxable years 1923, 1924, 1938, 1940 and 1941. In these assessments, among other items, the Commissioner claimed deficiencies in the respondent's income tax payments based upon his abovedescribed 1938 and 1941 receipts. The respondent, in a petition to the Tax Court for a redetermination of such deficiencies, not only contested the additional taxes assessed against him, which were based upon the full amounts of those receipts, but he asked also for the refund to him of the amounts which had been withheld, for 3 See Appendix B, infra, p. 398. Opinion of the Court. 337 U.S. income tax purposes, from each such payment. The Tax Court entered judgment against him for additional taxes for 1938, 1940 and 1941, in the respective amounts of $11,806.71, $8,080.83 and $1,854.85. In speaking of the taxes for 1940 and 1941, the Tax Court said: "The first issue, found also in the year 1938, presents the question of the taxability of lump sum payments for serial rights to literary works. Counsel for the petitioner [Wodehouse, the respondent here] concedes that substantially the same issue was raised and decided in Sax Rohmer, 5 T. C. 183; affd., 153 Fed. (2d) 61; certiorari denied, 328 U. S. 862. "In Sax Rohmer, supra, we held that the lump sum payments for serial rights were royalties and, as such, were taxable to the recipient. The arguments advanced in the cases at bar follow the same pattern as those appearing in the Sax Rohmer case, as presented to this Court and to the Circuit Court of Appeals. The petitioner's contentions were rejected in both courts and for the same reasons stated in the opinions therein, they are rejected here." 8 T. C. 637, 653. As the respondent's taxes for 1938 and 1941 had been paid to the Collector of Internal Revenue at Baltimore, Maryland, his petition for review of the Tax Court's judgment for those years was filed in the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. The judgment against him was there reversed, 166 F. 2d 986, one judge dissenting on the authority and reasoning of Rohmer v. Commissioner, 153 F. 2d 61 (C. A. 2d Cir.). Because of the resulting conflict between the Circuits and also because comparable issues as to this respondent's taxes for 1940 were pending before the Court of Appeals for 369 Opinion of the Court. the Second Circuit, we granted certiorari. 335 U. S. 807.* The petitioner contends that receipts of the type before us long have been recognized as rentals or royalties paid for the use of or for the privilege of using in the United States, patents, copyrights and other like property. Keeping in mind that, before 1936, such receipts were expressly subject to withholding as part of the taxable income of nonresident alien individuals, he contends that those receipts remained taxable and subject to withholding in 1938 and 1941, after the standards for taxation of such aliens had been made expressly coterminous with the standards for subjecting this part of their income to withholding procedures. In opposition, the respondent argues, first, that each sum he received was a payment made to him in return for his sale of a property interest in a copyright and not a payment to him of a royalty for rights granted by him under the protection of his copyright. Being the proceeds of a sale by him of such a property interest, he concludes that those proceeds were not required to be included in his taxable gross income because the controlling Revenue 4 As the court below held that the respondent's 1938 and 1941 receipts were not subject to taxation, it did not reach the subsidiary issues which had been raised as to the proper amount of those taxes if they were sustained. Similarly, the court below did not pass upon the claim that certain of the assessments were subject to the three-year statute of limitations rather than the five-year statute here applied. See § 275 (a) and (c), 52 Stat. 539, 53 Stat. 86, 26 U. S. C. § 275 (a) and (c). This claim turned upon the recognition to be given to certain assignments made by the respondent to his wife. Those assignments, if fully recognized, might have reduced the tax to be assessed against the respondent to an amount less than 25% of the amount originally stated by him in his return and thus rendered the five-year statute inapplicable. However, the effect of those assignments was not passed upon by the court below. Opinion of the Court. 337 U.S. Acts did not attempt to tax nonresident alien individuals, like himself, upon income from sales of property. Secondly, the respondent argues that, even if his receipts were to be treated as royalties, yet each was received in a single lump sum and not "annually" or "periodically," and that, therefore, they did not come within his taxable gross income. The petitioner replies that, in this case, we do not properly reach the fine questions of title, or of sales or copyright law, thus raised by the respondent as to the divisibility of a copyright or as to the sale of some interest in a copyright. The petitioner states that the issue here is one of statutory interpretation. It is confined primarily to the taxability of the respondent's receipts within the broad, rather than narrow, language of certain Revenue Acts. Attention must be focused on those Revenue Acts. If their terms made these receipts taxable because of the general nature of the transactions out of which the receipts arise, namely, payments for the use of or for the privilege of using copyrights, then it is those statutory definitions, properly read in the light of their context and of their legislative history, that must determine the taxability of the receipts. He argues that the language of the Revenue Acts does not condition the right of the United States to its revenue upon any fine point of property law but covers these receipts in any event. Treating the respondent's receipts simply as representing payments for the use of or the privilege of using copyrights the petitioner argues that they constituted income that was subject both to withholding and to taxation in 1938 and 1941. He claims finally that the respondent cannot escape taxation of such receipts merely by showing that each payment was received by him in a lump sum in advance for certain uses of a copyright, instead of in several payments to be made at intermediate dates during the life of the copyright. 369 Opinion of the Court. I. Sums received by a nonresident alien individual for the use of a copyright in the United States constituted gross income taxable to him under the Revenue Act of 1938 and the Internal Revenue Code. Under the income tax laws of the United States, sums received by a nonresident alien author not engaged in trade or business within the United States and not having an office or place of business therein long have been required to be included in his gross income for our federal tax purposes. Such receipts have been an appropriate and readily collectible subject of taxation. A review of the statutes, regulations, administrative practices and court decisions discloses this policy and, at least from a revenue standpoint, no reason has appeared for changing it. Since the early days of our income tax levies, rentals and royalties paid for the use of or for the privilege of using in the United States, patents, copyrights and other like property have been taxed to nonresident aliens and for many years at least a part of the tax has been withheld at the source of the income. To exempt this type of income from taxation in 1938 or 1941, in the face of this long record of its taxation, would require a clearness and positiveness of legislative determination to change the established procedure that is entirely absent here. The policy of this Court in this general field of statutory interpretation was stated in 1934 in a case which dealt with the taxation of a somewhat comparable form of income of a foreign corporation. In Helvering v. Stockholms Enskilda Bank, 293 U. S. 84, the question presented was that of the proper interpretation to be given to § 217 (a) (1) of the Revenue Act of 1926, c. 27, 44 Stat. 9, 30 (analogous to § 119 (a) (1) of the Revenue Act of 1938, 52 Stat. 503, now before us). Certain sums |