Basic Income Tax 2015-2016 William Kratzke
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- Gilliam v. Commissioner
Commissioner v. Tellier, 383 U.S. 687 (1966). MR. JUSTICE STEWART delivered the opinion of the Court. The question presented in this case is whether expenses incurred by a taxpayer in the unsuccessful defense of a criminal prosecution may qualify for deduction from taxable income under § 162(a), which allows a deduction of “all the ordinary and necessary expenses paid or incurred during the taxable year in carrying on any trade or business. ...” [footnote omitted] The respondent Walter F. Tellier was engaged in the business of underwriting the public sale of stock offerings and purchasing securities for resale to customers. In 1956, he was brought to trial upon a 36-count indictment that charged him with violating the fraud section of the Securities Act of 1933 [footnote omitted] and the mail fraud statute, [footnote omitted] and with conspiring to violate those statutes. [footnote omitted] He was found guilty on all counts, and was sentenced to pay an $18,000 fine and to serve four and a half years in prison. The judgment of conviction was affirmed on appeal. [footnote omitted] In his unsuccessful defense of this criminal prosecution, the respondent incurred and paid $22,964.20 in legal expenses in 1956. He claimed a deduction for that amount on his federal income tax return for that year. The Commissioner disallowed the deduction, and was sustained by the Tax Court. The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed in a unanimous en banc decision, and we granted certiorari. We affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals. There can be no serious question that the payments deducted by the respondent were expenses of his securities business under the decisions of this Court, and the Commissioner does not contend otherwise. In United States v. Gilmore, 372 U.S. 39, we held that “the origin and character of the claim with respect to which an expense was incurred, rather than its potential consequences upon the fortunes of the taxpayer, is the controlling basic test of whether the expense was ‘business’ or ‘personal’” within the meaning of § 162(a). Cf. Kornhauser v. United States, 276 U.S. 145; Deputy v. du Pont, 308 U.S. 488. The criminal charges against the respondent found their source in his business activities as a securities dealer. The respondent’s legal fees, paid in defense against those charges, therefore clearly qualify under Gilmore as “expenses paid or incurred ... in carrying on any trade or business” within the meaning of § 162(a). The Commissioner also concedes that the respondent’s legal expenses were “ordinary” and “necessary” expenses within the meaning of § 162(a). Our decisions have consistently construed the term “necessary” as imposing only the minimal requirement that the expense be “appropriate and helpful” for “the development of the [taxpayer’s] business.” Welch v. Helvering, 290 U.S. 111; cf. Kornhauser v. United States, supra, at 276 U.S. 152; Lilly v. Commissioner, 343 U.S. 90, 93-94; Commissioner v. Heininger, 320 U.S. 467, 320 U.S. 471; McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316, 17 U.S. 413-415. The principal function of the term “ordinary” in § 162(a) is to clarify the distinction, often difficult, between those expenses that are currently deductible and those that are in the nature of capital expenditures, which, if deductible at all, must be amortized over the useful life of the asset. Welch v. Helvering, supra, at 290 U.S. 113-116. [footnote omitted] The legal expenses deducted by the respondent were not capital expenditures. They were incurred in his defense against charges of past criminal conduct, not in the acquisition of a capital asset. Our decisions establish that counsel fees comparable to those here involved are ordinary business expenses, even though a “lawsuit affecting the safety of a business may happen once a lifetime.” Welch v. Helvering, supra, at 290 U.S. 114. Kornhauser v. United States, supra, at 276 U.S. 152-153; cf. Trust of Bingham v. Commissioner, 325 U.S. 365, 376. [footnote omitted] It is therefore clear that the respondent’s legal fees were deductible under § 162(a) if the provisions of that section are to be given their normal effect in this case. The Commissioner and the Tax Court determined, however, that, even though the expenditures meet the literal requirements of § 162(a), their deduction must nevertheless be disallowed on the ground of public policy. That view finds considerable support in other administrative and judicial decisions.131 It finds no support, however, in any regulation or statute or in any decision of this Court, and we believe no such “public policy” exception to the plain provisions of § 162(a) is warranted in the circumstances presented by this case. We start with the proposition that the federal income tax is a tax on net income, not a sanction against wrongdoing. That principle has been firmly imbedded in the tax statute from the beginning. One familiar facet of the principle is the truism that the statute does not concern itself with the lawfulness of the income that it taxes. Income from a criminal enterprise is taxed at a rate no higher and no lower than income from more conventional sources. “[T]he fact that a business is unlawful [does not] exempt it from paying the taxes that if lawful it would have to pay.” United States v. Sullivan, 274 U.S. 259. See James v. United States, 366 U.S. 213. With respect to deductions, the basic rule, with only a few limited and well defined exceptions, is the same. During the Senate debate in 1913 on the bill that became the first modern income tax law, amendments were rejected that would have limited deductions for losses to those incurred in a “legitimate” or “lawful” trade or business. Senator Williams, who was in charge of the bill, stated on the floor of the Senate that “[T]he object of this bill is to tax a man’s net income; that is to say, what he has at the end of the year after deducting from his receipts his expenditures or losses. It is not to reform men’s moral characters; that is not the object of the bill at all. The tax is not levied for the purpose of restraining people from betting on horse races or upon ‘futures,’ but the tax is framed for the purpose of making a man pay upon his net income, his actual profit during the year. The law does not care where he got it from, so far as the tax is concerned, although the law may very properly care in another way.” 50 Cong. Rec. 3849.132 The application of this principle is reflected in several decisions of this Court. As recently as Commissioner v. Sullivan, 356 U.S. 27, we sustained the allowance of a deduction for rent and wages paid by the operators of a gambling enterprise, even though both the business itself and the specific rent and wage payments there in question were illegal under state law. In rejecting the Commissioner’s contention that the illegality of the enterprise required disallowance of the deduction, we held that, were we to “enforce as federal policy the rule espoused by the Commissioner in this case, we would come close to making this type of business taxable on the basis of its gross receipts, while all other business would be taxable on the basis of net income. If that choice is to be made, Congress should do it.” Id. at 356 U.S. 29. In Lilly v. Commissioner, 343 U.S. 90, the Court upheld deductions claimed by opticians for amounts paid to doctors who prescribed the eyeglasses that the opticians sold, although the Court was careful to disavow “approval of the business ethics or public policy involved in the payments. ...” 343 U.S. at 97. And in Commissioner v. Heininger, 320 U.S. 467, a case akin to the one before us, the Court upheld deductions claimed by a dentist for lawyer’s fees and other expenses incurred in unsuccessfully defending against an administrative fraud order issued by the Postmaster General. Deduction of expenses falling within the general definition of § 162(a) may, to be sure, be disallowed by specific legislation, since deductions “are a matter of grace and Congress can, of course, disallow them as it chooses.” Commissioner v. Sullivan, 356 U.S. at 28.133 The Court has also given effect to a precise and longstanding Treasury Regulation prohibiting the deduction of a specified category of expenditures; an example is lobbying expenses, whose nondeductibility was supported by considerations not here present. Textile Mills Securities Corp. v. Commissioner, 314 U.S. 326; Cammarano v. United States, 358 U.S. 498. But where Congress has been wholly silent, it is only in extremely limited circumstances that the Court has countenanced exceptions to the general principle reflected in the Sullivan, Lilly, and Heininger decisions. Only where the allowance of a deduction would “frustrate sharply defined national or state policies proscribing particular types of conduct” have we upheld its disallowance. Commissioner v. Heininger, 320 U.S. at 473. Further, the “policies frustrated must be national or state policies evidenced by some governmental declaration of them.” Lilly v. Commissioner, 343 U.S. at 97. (Emphasis added.) Finally, the “test of nondeductibility always is the severity and immediacy of the frustration resulting from allowance of the deduction.” Tank Truck Rentals v. Commissioner, 356 U.S. 30, 35. In that case, as in Hoover Motor Express Co. v. United States, 356 U.S. 38, we upheld the disallowance of deductions claimed by taxpayers for fines and penalties imposed upon them for violating state penal statutes; to allow a deduction in those circumstances would have directly and substantially diluted the actual punishment imposed. The present case falls far outside that sharply limited and carefully defined category. No public policy is offended when a man faced with serious criminal charges employs a lawyer to help in his defense. That is not “proscribed conduct.” It is his constitutional right. Chandler v. Fretag, 348 U.S. 3. See Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335. In an adversary system of criminal justice, it is a basic of our public policy that a defendant in a criminal case have counsel to represent him. Congress has authorized the imposition of severe punishment upon those found guilty of the serious criminal offenses with which the respondent was charged and of which he was convicted. But we can find no warrant for attaching to that punishment an additional financial burden that Congress has neither expressly nor implicitly directed.134 To deny a deduction for expenses incurred in the unsuccessful defense of a criminal prosecution would impose such a burden in a measure dependent not on the seriousness of the offense or the actual sentence imposed by the court, but on the cost of the defense and the defendant’s particular tax bracket. We decline to distort the income tax laws to serve a purpose for which they were neither intended nor designed by Congress. The judgment is Affirmed.  Notes and Questions:
1. Why should the standard of “necessary” under § 162 be a minimal one, i.e., appropriate and helpful? Are there forces other than the rules of § 162 that will provide controls on the amounts that a taxpayer spends to further his/her/its business? •Recall the statement in Welch v. Helvering: Taxpayer “certainly thought [payments to creditors of a bankrupt corporation were necessary], and we should be slow to override his judgment.” 2. The income tax is a tax only on net income. The one exception to this – explicitly stated in the Code – is § 280E. The expenses of carrying on the trade or business of trafficking in controlled substances are not deductible. •Is § 280E constitutional? •Who would want to know?
•A refusal to incorporate public policy into the Code hardly means that there is no public policy limitation on deductibility under § 162. Rather, those limitations must be explicitly stated in the statute itself. •See Court’s discussion of the point and its third footnote. •Note the topics covered in §§ 162(b, c, e, f, g, k, l, and m). 4. The term “ordinary” has a relatively special meaning as used in § 162. What is it? 5. In Tellier, taxpayer was a criminal. He nevertheless could deduct the “ordinary and necessary” trade or business expenses arising from this character flaw. •Should taxpayer be permitted to deduct the ordinary and necessary expenses associated with mental “flaws?” Is Gilliam distinguishable from Tellier? Gilliam v. Commissioner, 51 T.C. Memo. 515 (1986), available at 1986 WL 21482. MEMORANDUM FINDINGS OF FACT AND OPINION CHABOT, JUDGE: FINDINGS OF FACT .... [Taxpayer] Gilliam is, and was at all material periods, a noted artist. His works have been exhibited in numerous art galleries throughout the United States and Europe … In addition, Gilliam is, and was at all material periods, a teacher of art. On occasion, Gilliam lectured and taught art at various institutions. Gilliam accepted an invitation to lecture and teach for a week at the Memphis Academy of Arts in Memphis, Tennessee. On Sunday, February 23, 1975, he flew to Memphis to fulfill this business obligation. Gilliam had a history of hospitalizations for mental and emotional disturbances and continued to be under psychiatric care until the time of his trip to Memphis. In December 1963, Gilliam was hospitalized in Louisville; Gilliam had anxieties about his work as an artist. For periods of time in both 1965 and 1966, Gilliam suffered from depression and was unable to work. In 1970, Gilliam was again hospitalized. In 1973, while Gilliam was a visiting artist at a number of university campuses in California, he found it necessary to consult an airport physician; however, when he returned to Washington, D.C., Gilliam did not require hospitalization. Before his Memphis trip, Gilliam created a 225-foot painting for the Thirty-fourth Biennial Exhibition of American Painting at the Corcoran Gallery of Art (hereinafter sometimes referred to as ‘the Exhibition’). The Exhibition opened on Friday evening, February 21, 1975. In addition, Gilliam was in the process of preparing a giant mural for an outside wall of the Philadelphia Museum of Art for the 1975 Spring Festival in Philadelphia. The budget plans for this mural were due on Monday, February 24, 1975. On the night before his Memphis trip, Gilliam felt anxious and unable to rest. On Sunday morning, Gilliam contacted Ranville Clark (hereinafter sometimes referred to as ‘Clark’), a doctor Gilliam had been consulting intermittently over the years, and asked Clark to prescribe some medication to relieve his anxiety. Clark arranged for Gilliam to pick up a prescription of the drug Dalmane on the way to the airport. Gilliam had taken medication frequently during the preceding 10 years. Clark had never before prescribed Dalmane for Gilliam. On Sunday, February 23, 1975, Gilliam got the prescription and at about 3:25 p.m., he boarded American Airlines flight 395 at Washington National Airport, Washington, D.C., bound for Memphis. Gilliam occupied a window seat. He took the Dalmane for the first time shortly after boarding the airplane. About one and one-half hours after the airplane departed Washington National Airport, Gilliam began to act in an irrational manner. He talked of bizarre events and had difficulty in speaking. According to some witnesses, he appeared to be airsick and held his head. Gilliam began to feel trapped, anxious, disoriented, and very agitated. Gilliam said that the plane was going to crash and that he wanted a life raft. Gilliam entered the aisle and, while going from one end of the airplane to the other, he tried to exit from three different doors. Then Gilliam struck Seiji Nakamura (hereinafter sometimes referred to as ‘Nakamura’), another passenger, several times with a telephone receiver. Nakamura was seated toward the rear of the airplane, near one of the exits. Gilliam also threatened the navigator and a stewardess, called for help, and cried. As a result of the attack, Nakamura sustained a one-inch laceration above his left eyebrow which required four sutures. Nakamura also suffered ecchymosis of the left arm and pains in his left wrist. Nakamura was treated for these injuries at Methodist Hospital in Memphis. On arriving in Memphis, Gilliam was arrested by Federal officials. On March 10, 1975, Gilliam was indicted. He was brought to trial in the United States District Court for the Western District of Tennessee, Western Division, on one count of violation of 49 U.S.C. § 1472(k) (relating to certain crimes aboard an aircraft in flight) and two counts of violation 49 U.S.C. § 1472(j) (relating to interference with flight crew members or flight attendants). Gilliam entered a plea of not guilty to the criminal charges. ... After Gilliam presented all of his evidence, the district court granted Gilliam’s motion for a judgment of acquittal by reason of temporary insanity. Petitioners paid $8250 and $8600 for legal fees in 1975 and 1976, respectively, in connection with both the criminal trial and Nakamura’s civil claim. In 1975, petitioners also paid $3800 to Nakamura in settlement of the civil claim. Petitioners claimed deductions for the amounts paid in 1975 and 1976 on the appropriate individual income tax returns. Respondent disallowed the amounts claimed in both years attributable to the incident on the airplane. [footnote omitted]. * * * Gilliam’s trip to Memphis was a trip in furtherance of his trades or businesses. …. OPINION Petitioners contend that they are entitled to deduct the amounts paid in defense of the criminal prosecution and in settlement of the related civil claim under § 162. [footnote omitted]. Petitioners maintain that the instant case is directly controlled by our decision in Dancer v. Commissioner, 73 T.C. 1103 (1980). According to petitioners, ‘[t]he clear holding of Dancer is *** that expenses for litigation arising out of an accident which occurs during a business trip are deductible as ordinary and necessary business expenses. ‘ Petitioners also contend that Clark v. Commissioner, 30 T.C. 1330 (1958), is to the same effect as Dancer. Respondent maintains that Dancer and Clark are distinguishable. Respondent contends that the legal fees paid are not deductible under either § 162 or § 212 because the criminal charges against Gilliam were neither directly connected with nor proximately resulted from his trade or business and the legal fees were not paid for the production of income. Respondent maintains that ‘the criminal charges which arose as a result of *** (the incident on the airplane), could hardly be deemed ‘ordinary,’ given the nature of (Gilliam’s) profession.’ Respondent contends ‘that the provisions of § 262 control this situation.’ As to the settlement of the related civil claim, respondent asserts that since Gilliam committed an intentional tort, the settlement of the civil claim constitutes a nondeductible personal expense. We agree with respondent that the expenses are not ordinary expenses of Gilliam’s trade or business. Section 162(a) [footnote omitted] allows a deduction for all the ordinary and necessary expenses of carrying on a trade or business. In order for the expense to be deductible by a taxpayer, it must be an ordinary expense, it must be a necessary expense, and it must be an expense of carrying on the taxpayer’s trade or business. If any one of these requirements is not met, the expense is not deductible under § 162(a). Deputy v. du Pont, 308 U.S. 488 (1940); Welch v. Helvering, 290 U.S. 111 (1933); Kornhauser v. United States, 276 U.S. 145 (1928). In Deputy v. du Pont, the Supreme Court set forth a guide for application of the statutory requirement that the expense be ‘ordinary’, as follows (308 U.S. at 494-497): [...] Ordinary has the connotation of normal, usual, or customary. To be sure, an expense may be ordinary though it happens but once in the taxpayer’s lifetime. Cf. Kornhauser v. United States, supra. Yet the transaction which gives rise to it must be of common or frequent occurrence in the type of business involved. Welch v. Helvering, supra, 114. Hence, the fact that a particular expense would be an ordinary or common one in the course of one business and so deductible under [§ 162(a)] does not necessarily make it such in connection with another business. *** As stated in Welch v. Helvering, supra, pp. 113-114: ‘... What is ordinary, though there must always be a strain of constancy within it, is none the less a variable affected by time and place and circumstance.’ 22 F. Supp. 589, 597. One of the extremely relevant circumstances is the nature and scope of the particular business out of which the expense in question accrued. The fact that an obligation to pay has arisen is not sufficient. It is the kind of transaction out of which the obligation arose and its normalcy in the particular business which are crucial and controlling. Review of the many decided cases is of little aid since each turns on its special facts. But the principle is clear. [...] [T]he fact that the payments might have been necessary ... is of no aid. For Congress has not decreed that all necessary expenses may be deducted. Though plainly necessary they cannot be allowed unless they are also ordinary. Welch v. Helvering, supra. ... It undoubtedly is ordinary for people in Gilliam’s trades or businesses to travel (and to travel by air) in the course of such trades or businesses; however, we do not believe it is ordinary for people in such trades or businesses to be involved in altercations of the sort here involved in the course of any such travel. The travel was not itself the conduct of Gilliam’s trades or businesses. Also, the expenses here involved are not strictly a cost of Gilliam’s transportation. Finally, it is obvious that neither the altercation nor the expenses were undertaken to further Gilliam’s trades or businesses. We conclude that Gilliam’s expenses are not ordinary expenses of his trades or businesses. It is instructive to compare the instant case with Dancer v. Commissioner, supra, upon which petitioners rely. In both cases, the taxpayer was traveling on business. In both cases, the expenses in dispute were not the cost of the traveling, but rather were the cost of an untoward incident that occurred in the course of the trip. In both cases, the incident did not facilitate the trip or otherwise assist the taxpayer’s trade or business. In both cases, the taxpayer was responsible for the incident; in neither case was the taxpayer willful. In Dancer, the taxpayer was driving an automobile; he caused an accident which resulted in injuries to a child. The relevant expenses were the taxpayer’s payments to settle the civil claims arising from the accident. 73 T.C. at 1105. In the instant case, Gilliam was a passenger in an airplane; he apparently committed acts which would have been criminal but for his temporary insanity, and he injured a fellow passenger. Gilliam’s expenses were the costs of his successful legal defense, and his payments to settle Nakamura’s civil claim. In Dancer, we stated as follows (73 T.C. at 1108-1109): It is true that the expenditure in the instant case did not further petitioner’s business in any economic sense; nor is it, we hope, the type of expenditure that many businesses are called upon to pay. Nevertheless, neither factor lessens the direct relationship between the expenditure and the business. Automobile travel by petitioner was an integral part of this business. As rising insurance rates suggest, the cost of fuel and routine servicing are not the only costs one can expect in operating a car. As unfortunate as it may be, lapses by drivers seem to be an inseparable incident of driving a car. Anderson v. Commissioner (81 F.2d 457 (CA10 1936)). Costs incurred as a result of such an incident are just as much a part of overall business expenses as the cost of fuel. (Emphasis supplied.) Dancer is distinguishable. In Clark v. Commissioner, supra, also relied on by petitioners, the expenses consisted of payments of (a) legal fees in defense of a criminal prosecution and (b) amounts to settle a related civil claim. In this regard, the instant case is similar to Clark. In Clark, however, the taxpayer’s activities that gave rise to the prosecution and civil claim were activities directly in the conduct of Clark’s trade or business. In the instant case, Gilliam’s activities were not directly in the conduct of his trades or businesses. Rather, the activities merely occurred in the course of transportation connected with Gilliam’s trades or businesses. And, as we noted in Dancer v. Commissioner, 73 T.C. at 1106, ‘in cases like this, where the cost is an adjunct of and not a direct cost of transporting an individual, we have not felt obliged to routinely allow the expenditure as a transportation cost deduction.’ Petitioners also rely on Commissioner v. Tellier, 383 U.S. 687 (1966), in which the taxpayer was allowed to deduct the cost of an unsuccessful criminal defense to securities fraud charges. The activities that gave rise to the criminal prosecution in Tellier were activities directly in the conduct of Tellier’s trade or business. Our analysis of the effect of Clark v. Commissioner, applies equally to the effect of Commissioner v. Tellier. In sum, Gilliam’s expenses were of a kind similar to those of the taxpayers in Tellier and Clark; however the activities giving rise to Gilliam’s expenses were not activities directly in the conduct of his trades or businesses, while Tellier’s and Clark’s activities were directly in the conduct of their respective trades or businesses. Gilliam’s expenses were related to his trades or businesses in a manner similar to those of the taxpayer in Dancer; however Gilliam’s actions giving rise to the expenses were not shown to be ordinary, while Dancer’s were shown to be ordinary. Tellier, Clark, and Dancer all have similarities to the instant case; however, Tellier, Clark, and Dancer are distinguishable in important respects. The expenses are not deductible under § 162(a). [footnote omitted]. We hold for respondent. Notes and Questions: If not “ordinary” ...: In Welch, the opposite of an “ordinary” expense was a capital expense. What is the opposite of “ordinary” in Gilliam? 1. Were the expenses incurred by taxpayer “necessary?” 2. By what means did the court in fact implement a public policy limitation on taxpayer’s trade or business expense? Why were the deductions that taxpayer claimed denied? •because they were “extraordinary” in light of taxpayer’s trade or business? •If so, are there trades or businesses in which such expenditures would not be extraordinary? •What if airline employees hit taxpayer and incurred tort damages and legal expenses? These expenses would be the very type of expenses that Gilliam could not deduct. 3. Even when taxpayer incurs ordinary and necessary trade or business expense, taxpayer might not be entitled to deduct them. 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