Hall v. COMMISSIONER OF INTERNAL REVENUE

• Decision Date: 18 April 1929
• Docket Number: Docket No. 13552.
• Parties: JOHN S. HALL AND JAMES GARFIELD, EXECUTORS, ESTATE OF CHAS. F. CHOATE, JR., PETITIONERS, v. COMMISSIONER OF INTERNAL REVENUE, RESPONDENT.
• Court: U.S. Board of Tax Appeals

16 B.T.A. 71 (1929)

JOHN S. HALL AND JAMES GARFIELD, EXECUTORS, ESTATE OF CHAS. F. CHOATE, JR., PETITIONERS, v. COMMISSIONER OF INTERNAL REVENUE, RESPONDENT.

Docket No. 13552.

Board of Tax Appeals.

Promulgated April 18, 1929.

James Garfield, Esq., for the petitioners.

L. L. Hight, Esq., for the respondent.

This proceeding is upon a deficiency in income tax of $9,629.32 for the calendar year 1921, asserted against Charles F. Choate, Jr., deceased. Only one error is assigned — the disallowance by respondent of a deduction of $15,000, made from gross income by the taxpayer, as a loss resulting from damage sustained to his country estate by storm during the taxable year in question.

FINDINGS OF FACT.

Petitioners are the duly appointed executors of the estate of Charles F. Choate, Jr., formerly of Southborough, Mass., and who died November 30, 1927.

During the taxable year 1921 the said Charles F. Choate, Jr., was the owner of a country estate of Southborough, Mass., which he had acquired in 1911. This property when first acquired had no buildings upon it, but was improved with many exceptionally fine ornamental and fruit trees, some of natural growth and others which had been set out many years prior to that time and had reached an advanced state of growth and beauty. On acquiring the property the taxpayer in 1911 erected upon it, on a high point of ground where there were many trees so disposed as to give an especially pleasing and attractive outlook from each side, a large, handsome house, stables and other out buildings and further improved the estate by the planting of additional fruit and ornamental trees. In 1914 the taxpayer purchased an adjoining tract of land for $6,000, and included it in the estate which from that time forward by that addition comprised a total of 26 acres, and this was carefully tended at all times up to the taxable year 1921 in question.

On November 29, 1921, there occurred a very severe ice storm over the territory in the vicinity of the taxpayer's estate. Rain had fallen for some hours and froze as it fell causing the trees and shrubbery to be coated with ice, this coating becoming thicker until by that night the limbs began to break and fall. In some places this coating was several inches in thickness. All during the night of November 29 the breaking of the branches continued and by morning an enormous amount of damage had been done. On the taxpayer's estate all of the trees and shrubs, with the exception of a few in sheltered locations, had been broken, some of them destroyed, and many so injured that their symmetry was permanently marred and their life and...