State Police Ass'n of Massachusetts v. C.I.R., 97-1319

• Decision Date: 03 July 1997
• Docket Number: No. 97-1319,97-1319
• Citation: 125 F.3d 1
• Parties: -6074, 97-2 USTC P 50,627 STATE POLICE ASSOCIATION OF MASSACHUSETTS, Petitioner, Appellant, v. COMMISSIONER OF INTERNAL REVENUE, Respondent, Appellee. . Heard
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

Page 1

125 F.3d 1

80 A.F.T.R.2d 97-6074, 97-2 USTC P 50,627

STATE POLICE ASSOCIATION OF MASSACHUSETTS, Petitioner, Appellant, v. COMMISSIONER OF INTERNAL REVENUE, Respondent, Appellee.

No. 97-1319.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Heard July 3, 1997.

Decided Aug. 20, 1997.

Alfred J. O'Donovan, with whom Michelle H. Blauner and Shapiro, Haber & Urmy were on brief, for petitioner, appellant.

Teresa T. Milton, Attorney, Tax Division, U.S. Dep't of Justice, with whom Loretta C. Argrett, Assistant Attorney General, and Kenneth L. Greene, Attorney, Tax Division, were on brief, for respondent, appellee.

Before SELYA and LYNCH, Circuit Judges, and POLLAK, ^* Senior District Judge.

SELYA, Circuit Judge.

In this case, the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service (the Commissioner) issued a deficiency notice to the State Police Association of Massachusetts (the Association) for income taxes allegedly due but unpaid. When the Association protested, the Tax Court sided with the Commissioner. See State Police Ass'n of Mass. v. Commissioner, 72 T.C.M. (CCH) 582 (1996) (Tax Ct.Op.). The Association appeals, contending that the Tax Court erred both in finding that the deficiency assessment was timely and in holding that certain of the Association's activities gave rise to liability for unrelated business income tax. We affirm.

I. BACKGROUND

The Association is a labor organization, and, as such, is exempt from income taxes under 26 U.S.C. § 501(c)(5) (1994). ¹ The purpose of the organization is to represent its members in bargaining over the terms and conditions of their employment and to promote a fraternal spirit among members. Virtually all the troopers who are eligible to join the Association do so.

During the years at issue, the Association published an annual yearbook, known as The Constabulary. The yearbook consisted of photographs, articles, display advertisements, and a business directory. We describe infra the sales effort (which the Association in more salubrious times called the "earnings program") and the mechanics of publication and distribution. It is enough for now to say that the earnings program proved to be aptly named: gross receipts related to the publication of The Constabulary for the years at issue totalled $8,788,211. Of this amount, the Association retained somewhat over 40% (the precise percentage varied from year to year, and is of no consequence here). The Association paid no tax on the income.

It is said that all good things come to an end. Federal law requires that an otherwise tax-exempt organization must pay federal income tax on income derived from business ventures which are not substantially related to its tax-exempt purpose(s). See IRC § 511. After due investigation, the Commissioner concluded that the Association had violated this stricture because the sale of advertising in The Constabulary yielded taxable income. Acting on this conclusion, the Commissioner issued a deficiency notice seeking $1,352,433 in taxes due for the tax years ended April 30, 1986 through April 30, 1989, the three months ended July 31, 1989, and the tax years ended July 31, 1990 and 1991, along with additions to tax and penalties totalling $711,075.

Displeased by this turn of events, the Association brought suit in the Tax Court under IRC § 6213(a) to obtain a redetermination of the taxes allegedly due. It claimed that, for certain tax years, the notice of deficiency had been issued beyond the applicable limitation period; and that, on a broader plane, the activity cited by the Commissioner--the solicitation, sale, and publication of display ads and listings in The Constabulary--did not constitute an unrelated trade or business regularly carried on, and that, therefore, the income derived from that activity was exempt from tax. The Tax Court rejected both of these and sustained the Commissioner's determination of the existence and extent of the deficiency (although it eliminated the additions to tax and the penalties). See Tax Ct.Op. at 589, 594. This appeal ensued.

II. THE PUTATIVE TIME BAR

The Association claims that the statute of limitations bars the collection of taxes as to some or all of the affected periods. The relevant facts are not in dispute. On August 3, 1992, the Association and the Commissioner, through their authorized representatives, executed a form entitled "Consent to Extend the Time to Assess Tax" (the Form). The Form, a copy of which is reprinted in the appendix, permitted the Commissioner to assess income tax on or before April 30, 1993, for the contested periods through July 31, 1989. The Commissioner assessed the taxes allegedly due for these periods by issuing a deficiency notice on April 22, 1993. The applicable limitation period is three years. See IRC § 6501(a). If the Form sufficed to extend the limitation period, then the deficiency notice was timely as to all the tax years at issue; if not, the Commissioner's claim for certain periods is probably time-barred.

The Association advances a purely linguistic argument on this point. It notes that the text of the Form provides for an extension of the limitation period solely with respect to tax due on "any return(s) made" by the Association during the periods in question. The only returns so made were information returns, on Form 990, entitled "Return of Organization Exempt from Income Tax." By definition, no tax could possibly be due on an information return. Taking this literal view, the Association contends that the Form did not extend the limitation period at all.

The Tax Court refused to swallow this slippery syllogism. It impliedly found the language of the Form ambiguous and construed it as broad enough to include not only taxes due on returns made but also taxes due on returns deemed to be made. See Tax Ct.Op. at 589. Ascertaining the ambiguity vel non of a writing requires a court to ask and answer a question of law, and, therefore, we review this conclusion de novo. See IRC § 7482(c)(1); see also RCI Northeast Servs. Div. v. Boston Edison Co., 822 F.2d 199, 202 (1st Cir.1987).

The Tax Court's rendition withstands scrutiny. Tax forms are rarely models of syntactical clarity, and the Form signed by the parties is no exception. The Tax Court read the phrase "return(s) made" as encompassing returns deemed to be made. This construction strikes us as reasonable.

Words must be read in context. Though a plain vanilla reading of the Form would support an inference that the parties wished to extend the limitation period for assessing taxes due on actual returns filed for the applicable periods, the context casts a different light on the phrase "return(s) made." When one takes into account that the only "returns made" were information returns on which no tax could conceivably be due, and that the signatories to the Form knew as much, the ambiguity of the phrase becomes apparent.

Our thinking runs along the following lines. It would be nonsensical to extend the limitation period for assessment of taxes due on a return on which, by operation of law, no tax conceivably could be due. The law, in turn, should be reluctant to insist that courts construe a document in a way that leads to an absurd or nonsensical result. Indeed, the maxim ut res magis valeat quam pereat teaches that a written instrument ordinarily should be given a meaning that will make it legally functional rather than a meaning which will render it legally dysfunctional. See 3 Arthur Linton Corbin, Corbin on Contracts § 532 (1960); see also Blackie v. Maine, 75 F.3d 716, 722 (1st Cir.1996). Thus, the very implausibility of the Association's proposed construction suggests that the phrase "return[s] made" must have some other meaning.

This conclusion is fortified by the wonted operation of the relevant provisions of the Internal Revenue Code. Specifically, a return relative to the unrelated business taxable income of a normally tax-exempt organization (a so-called "990-T" return) is deemed made, for purposes of starting the running of the limitation period, when the information return (a so-called "990" return) is in fact made. See California Thoroughbred Breeders Ass'n v. Commissioner, 47 T.C. 335, 338, 1966 WL 1128 (1966) (construing IRC § 6501(g)(2)). Without this rule deeming the Association's 990 return to be a 990-T return, the statute of limitations that the Association seeks to invoke would, presumably, not yet have begun to run. The Association thus seeks to link the two forms for the purposes of starting the limitations period, but would have us decouple the forms in reviewing its agreement to extend that period. Perhaps more important, reading the Form against the backdrop of the California Thoroughbred Breeders rule suggests another (broader) meaning for the phrase "return(s) made"--a meaning which extends to returns deemed made--and thus highlights the ambiguity of the Form.

That ends the matter. The presence of an ambiguity permits a reviewing court to examine extrinsic evidence in an effort to clarify the intent of the parties. See Smart v. Gillette Co. Long-Term Disability Plan, 70 F.3d 173, 179 (1st Cir.1995); RCI Northeast, 822 F.2d at 202. Here, the extrinsic evidence is telling: the Association's reading of the Form contradicts what even the Association admits was the parties' mutual intention--to extend the limitation period as to any unrelated business income tax that might be due for the affected periods.

We need not linger. ² We resolve contractual ambiguity in favor of effectiveness, accept the discerned intent of the parties, endorse the Tax Court's interpretation of the phrase "return[s] made," and hold that the Form extended the limitation period as to the assessment of unrelated business income tax. The notice of deficiency was, therefore, timely as to all the contested tax years.

III. THE MERITS

The gravamen of the Commissioner's case is the charge that the activity undertaken in connection with publication...