Load term with PHP not working

I need to load a particular term by its name. I'm using the following PHP snippet to do so (note that I am using node auto-term so the node title is my term):

  $terms = taxonomy_get_term_by_name($node->title);
  echo $terms[0]->tid;

When this didn't work I attempted something simple just as a test:

  $term = '67';
  echo $term;

This too did not work. Simply entering 67 into the form works just fine, but php evaluation does not seem to function correctly.