Burnet v. Sanford Brooks Co 1930

• Decision Date: 05 January 1931
• Docket Number: No. 31,31
• Citation: 282 U.S. 359,51 S.Ct. 150,75 L.Ed. 383
• Parties: BURNET, Commissioner of Internal Revenue, v. SANFORD & BROOKS CO. Argued Dec. 5-8, 1930
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

282 U.S. 359

51 S.Ct. 150

75 L.Ed. 383

BURNET, Commissioner of Internal Revenue,

v SANFORD & BROOKS CO.

No. 31.

Argued Dec. 5-8, 1930.

Decided Jan. 5, 1931.

The Attorney General, and Mr. Claude R. Branch, of Providence, R. I., for petitioner.

Messrs. Harry W. Baetjer and Charles McH. Howard, both of Baltimore, Md., for respondent.

[Argument of Counsel from page 360 intentionally omitted] Mr. Justice STONE delivered the opinion of the Court.

In this case certiorari was granted, Lucas v. Sanford & Brooks Co., 281 U. S. 707, 50 S. Ct. 240, 74 L. Ed. 1130, to review a judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, 35 F.(2d) 312, reversing an order of the Board of Tax Appeals, 11 B. T. A. 452, which had sustained the action of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue in making a deficiency assessment against respondent for income and profits taxes for the year 1920.

From 1913 to 1915, inclusive, respondent, a Delaware corporation engaged in business for profit, was acting for the Atlantic Dredging Company in carrying out a contract for dredging the Delaware River, entered into by that company with the United States. In making its income tax returns for the years 1913 to 1916, respondent added to gross income for each year the pamen ts made under the contract that year, and deducted its expenses paid that year in performing the contract. The total expenses exceeded the payments received by $176,271.88. The tax returns for 1913, 1915, and 1916 showed net losses. That for 1914 showed net income.

In 1915 work under the contract was abandoned, and in 1916 suit was brought in the Court of Claims to recover for a breach of warranty of the character of the material to be dredged. Judgment for the claimant, 53 Ct. Cl. 490, was affirmed by this Court in 1920. United States v. Atlantic Dredging Co., 253 U. S. 1, 40 S. Ct. 423, 425, 64 L. Ed. 735. It held that the recovery was upon the contract and was 'compensatory of the cost of the work, of which the government got the benefit.' From the total recovery, petitioner received in that year the sum of $192,577.59, which included the $176,271.88 by which its expenses under the contract had exceeded receipts from it, and accrued interest amounting to $16,305.71. Respondent having failed to include these amounts as gross income in its tax returns for 1920, the Commissioner made the deficiency assessment here involved, based on the addition of both items to gross income for that year.

The Court of Appeals ruled that only the item of interest was properly included, holding, erroneously as the government contends, that the item of $176,271.88 was a return of losses suffered by respondent in earlier years and hence was wrongly assessed as income. Notwithstanding this conclusion, its judgment of reversal and the consequent elimination of this item from gross income for 1920 were made contingent upon the filing by respondent of amended returns for the years 1913 to 1916, from which were to be omitted the deductions of the related items of expenses paid in those years. Respondent insists that as the Sixteenth Amendment and the Revenue Act of 1918, which was in force in 1920, plainly contemplate a tax only on net income or profits, any application of the statute which operates to impose a tax with respect to the present transaction, from which respondent received no profit, cannot be upheld.

If respondent's contention that only gain or profit may be taxed under the Sixteenth Amendment be accepted without qualification, see Eisner v. Macomber, 252 U. S. 189, 40 S. Ct. 189, 64 L. Ed. 521, 9 A. L. R. 1570; Doyle v. Mitchell Brothers Co., 247 U. S. 179, 38 S. Ct. 467, 62 L. Ed. 1054, the question remains whether the gain or profit which is the subject of the tax may be ascertained, as here, on the basis of fixed accounting periods, or whether, as is pressed upon us, it can only be net profit ascertained on the basis of particular transactions of the taxpayer when they are brought to a conclusion.

All the revenue acts which have been enacted since the adoption of the Sixteenth Amendment have uniformly assessed the tax on the basis of annual returns showing the net result of all the taxpayer's transactions during a fixed accounting period, either the calendar year, or, at the option of the taxpayer, the particular fiscal year which he may adopt. Under sections 230, 232 and 234(a) of the Revenue Act of 1918, 40 Stat. 1057, respondent was subject to tax upon its annual net income, arrived at by deducting from gross income for each taxable year all the ordinary and necessary expenses paid during that year in carrying on any trade or business, interest and taxes paid, and losses sustained, during the year. By sections 233(a) and 213(a) gross income 'includes * * * income derived from * * * business * * * or the transaction of any business carried on for gain or profit, or gains or profits and income derived from any source whatever.' The amount of all such items is required to be included in the gross income for the taxable year in which received by the taxpayer, unless they may be properly accounted for on the accrual basis under Section 212(b). See United States v. Anderson, 269 U. S. 422, 46 S. Ct. 131, 70 L. Ed. 347; Aluminum Castings Co. v. Rotza hn, 282 U. S. 92, 51 S. Ct. 11, 75 L. Ed. 234, decided November 24, 1930.

That the recovery made by respondent in 1920 was gross income for that year within the meaning of these sections cannot, we think, be doubted. The money received was derived from a contract entered into in the course of respondent's business operations for profit. While it equalled, and in a loose sense was a return of, expenditures made in performing the contract, still, as the Board of Tax Appeals found, the expenditures were made in defraying the expenses incurred in the prosecution of the work under the contract, for the purpose of earning profits. They were not capital investments, the cost of which, if converted, must first be restored from the proceeds before there is a capital gain taxable as income. See Doyle v. Mitchell Brothers Co., supra, page 185 of 247 U. S., 38 S. Ct. 467.

That such receipts from the conduct of a business enterprise are to be included in the taxpayer's return as a part of gross income, regardless of whether the particular transaction results in net profit, sufficiently appears...