Tellier v. CIR
Decision Date | 16 February 1965 |
Docket Number | No. 29,Docket 28823.,29 |
Citation | 342 F.2d 690 |
Parties | Walter F. TELLIER and Evelyn H. Tellier, Petitioners, v. COMMISSIONER OF INTERNAL REVENUE, Respondent. |
Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit |
Michael Kaminsky, New York City (Whitman, Ransom & Coulson, New York City, on the brief), for petitioners.
Robert A. Bernstein, Atty., Dept. of Justice, Washington, D. C. (Louis F. Oberdorfer, Asst. Atty. Gen., Lee A. Jackson, Harry Baum, Attys., Dept. of Justice, of counsel), for respondent.
First issue before LUMBARD, Chief Judge, and HAYS and ANDERSON, Circuit Judges.
Second issue before LUMBARD, Chief Judge, and WATERMAN, FRIENDLY, SMITH, KAUFMAN, HAYS, MARSHALL and ANDERSON, Circuit Judges.
The first issue in this case is whether the profits realized from the sale by the taxpayer (Evelyn H. Tellier is a party only because she and her husband filed a joint return) of certain securities during the years 1952-1956 were taxable as ordinary income rather than as capital gain. The resolution of this issue turns upon whether the securities were held by the taxpayer for sale to customers in the ordinary course of his business of underwriting and selling securities. If they were so held, then under Section 117(a) (1) (A) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1939 (Section 1221(1) of the 1954 Code)1 the profits were taxable as ordinary income.
There is ample evidence to support the Tax Court's finding that the taxpayer held the securities for sale in the ordinary course of business. The taxpayer was engaged through Tellier and Company, in form a partnership but in fact wholly controlled by the taxpayer, in the business of underwriting the public sale of stock offerings and in purchasing securities for resale to customers. In connection with the underwriting agreements the taxpayer himself received stock or stock warrants which he sold, frequently through Tellier and Company.
There were seventy separate transactions of this kind during the years in question and the net gains from these sales were:
1952 ........................ $74,755.33 1953 ........................ 74,089.23 1954 ........................ 49,184.05 1955 ........................ 97,864.12 1956 ........................ 13,277.42
On some occasions as an inducement to make more sales of the publicly issued shares, taxpayer would give Tellier and Company's salesmen a part of his stock warrants. Tellier and Company had at all times free call upon the securities which taxpayer kept in an "investment account." The cashier of Tellier and Company had authority to borrow any security it might need either because of a short sale or because a security was not received.
In the words of the Tax Court:
HAYS, Circuit Judge (with whom LUMBARD, Chief Judge, and WATERMAN, FRIENDLY, SMITH, KAUFMAN, MARSHALL and ANDERSON, Circuit Judges, concur).
The second issue presented in this case is whether legal expenses for the unsuccessful defense of a criminal action are deductible. We have decided that this problem, though long considered as authoritatively answered in this Circuit, should be reexamined.3
Taxpayer was tried and convicted on a thirty-six count indictment charging him with violations of the fraud section of the Securities Act of 1933,4 with violations of the mail fraud statute,5 and with conspiracy to violate these statutes.6 He was sentenced to four and one-half years of imprisonment on each count, the sentences to run concurrently, and was fined $18,000. He claimed a deduction in 1956 in the amount of $22,964.20, representing expenditures during that year incurred in his defense in the criminal proceeding. The Commissioner disallowed this deduction and his ruling was sustained by the Tax Court.
In disallowing a deduction for the expenses of an unsuccessful defense of a criminal action the tax authorities are following a purely judge-made rule. There is nothing in the statute which dictates or even suggests such a result. The applicable provision is Section 162 of the 1954 Code which provides:
"There shall be allowed as a deduction all the ordinary and necessary expenses paid or incurred during the taxable year in carrying on any trade or business * * *."
There is no provision which expressly prohibits the deduction of the expenses of an unsuccessful defense. The general prohibition on deductions, Section 262, reads:
In 1951 Congress rejected a proposal for disallowing deductions under Section 162 "for any expense paid or incurred in or as a result of illegal wagering" on the ground that the Internal Revenue Code was not intended to penalize or prohibit unlawful activities.7
Randolph Paul said:
8
No Supreme Court case lends any support to the rule that the legal expenses of an unsuccessful criminal defense when paid or incurred in connection with the carrying on of a trade or business are not deductible. In fact the Court has cast doubt on the rule by what it has said with respect to the reasons ordinarily given to justify the existence of the rule. These reasons are: first, that the expenses occasioned by unlawful activities are not ordinary and necessary in the conduct of a business9 and second that the allowance of a deduction for such expenses would be contrary to public policy.10
Of the legal expenses of resisting issuance by the Postmaster General of a fraud order, the Court said in Commissioner v. Heininger, 320 U.S. 467, 470, 471, 472, 64 S.Ct. 249, 252, 253, 88 L.Ed. 171 (1943):
To the extent that the equation of illegality with extraordinary and unnecessary is not question begging, it is applying special meanings to "ordinary and necessary" which are not applied in other connections. So long as the expense arises out of the conduct of the business and is a required outlay it ought to be considered ordinary and necessary.
As to public policy the Supreme Court held in Lilly v. Commissioner, 343 U.S. 90, 96-97, 72 S.Ct. 497, 501, 96 L.Ed. 769 (1952):
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