Williams v. United States, 16545.
| Decision Date | 18 June 1957 |
| Docket Number | No. 16545.,16545. |
| Parties | W. Horace WILLIAMS, Sr., and Viola Bloch Williams, Appellants, v. UNITED STATES of America, Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit |
Rene H. Himel, Jr., Elton C. Lasseigne, Deutsch, Kerrigan & Stiles, New Orleans, La., for plaintiffs-appellants, Eberhard P. Deutsch, New Orleans, La., of counsel.
Walter Akerman, Jr., Atty., Dept. of Justice, Washington, D. C., Charles K. Rice, Asst. Atty. Gen., Lee A. Jackson, Ellis N. Slack, Robert N. Anderson, Attys., Dept. of Justice, Washington, D. C., Prim B. Smith, Jr., Asst. U. S. Atty., M. Hepburn Many, U. S. Atty., New Orleans, La., for appellee.
Before RIVES, JONES and BROWN, Circuit Judges.
On a trial without a jury, the District Court held that Taxpayer, president, director and substantial stockholder (approximately 40%) of W. Horace Williams Company, Inc., had not brought forward "* * * sufficient evidence to establish with any reasonable certainty the amount of * * * entertainment and other expenses." On that the Court made a conclusion of law that "The expense allowance to * * * Taxpayer * * * was not substantiated as an entertainment expense, and constitutes additional compensation to * * *" him.
The facts are amazingly simple: W. Horace Williams Company, Inc., incorporated in 1950, was established as a successor to the partnership of W. Horace Williams Company, which the evidence showed, and the Court found, was a large, highly successful and reputable engineering construction company operating principally in Louisiana. At the outset the Board of Directors, acting independently, by formal resolution fixed the president's salary at $3500 per month, and, in keeping with the previous years' practice while the business was operated as a partnership, granted an expense allowance of $500 per month ($6,000 per year) for which he would not have to account. Its purpose was to enable the president to engage in extensive entertainment of executives and responsible leaders of potential customers of the firm without subjecting him to the tedious responsibility of detailed accounting for such expenditures. There is no suggestion or finding, and none would be warranted,1 that its purpose was tax evasion or avoidance.
But the Taxpayer made no effort to establish how much he spent or in any way identify any of it with respect to any particular entertainment, either of event, persons, or amounts. All he could say was that he was certain that he spent all or more than all of it in paying for food, liquor and travel in the entertainment of customers. The Court did not reject this as untrustworthy, suspicious or morally doubtful evidence. On the contrary, the Court held that Taxpayer "* * * doubtless did have certain entertainment and other expenses in 1950 in connection with the performance of his duties as president of * * *" the corporation.
What the Court held was that in a suit for refund, the burden is on the Taxpayer to show the tax wrongfully collected, Reinecke v. Spalding, 280 U.S. 227, 50 S.Ct. 96, 74 L.Ed. 385; Helvering v. Taylor, 293 U.S. 507, 55 S.Ct. 287, 79 L.Ed. 623, and this carries a burden of demonstrating with some substantiality how much entertainment expense was actually paid or incurred.
That the trier, whether District Court or Tax Court, might have considerable latitude2 in making estimates of amounts...
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