Cecil v. Commissioner’s Empirical Analysis
100 F.2d 896 · 1939
Citation profile
22 federal appellate · 1 district · 1 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 38 later decisions — most recently November 1984 · most notably Bessenyey v. Commissioner (1967), Faulconer v. Commissioner (1984)
22 federal appellate · 1 district · 1 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Applies 26 U.S.C. § 23 · 26 U.S.C. § 24
Relies on Flint v. Stone Tracy Co. · United States v. Anderson · Helvering v. National Grocery Co. · Von Baumbach v. Sargent Land Co. · Palmer v. Commissioner
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 38 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The term ‘business’ as here used was evidently not intended to have a technical meaning but to be understood in its ordinary acceptation. It is a comprehensive term which, as used in the corporation income tax law of 1909, was defined by the Supreme Court in Flint v. Stone Tracy Co., 220 U.S. 107 , 31 S.Ct. 342 , 55 L.Ed. 389 , Ann.Cas.l912B, 1312, and Von Baumbach v. Sargent Land Co., 242 U.S. 503 , 515, 37 S.Ct. 201 , 204, 61 L.Ed. 460 , as including ‘that which occupies the time, attention, and labor of men for the purpose of a livelihood or profit.’ In United States v. Atlantic Coast Line Co., 4 Cir., 99 F.2d 6 , 7, this court, in an opinion by Judge Northcott, approved, the definition given in Black’s Law Dictionary, that ‘ “business” is a very comprehensive term and embraces everything about which a person can be employed’. In the adjudicated cases which have applied the word as used in section 23(a) of the Revenue Act of 1928 [ 26 U.S.C.A. § 23 (a)], and in corresponding sections of other income tax statutes, there is the recurrent expression that the enterprise must have been undertaken for ‘gain or profit’; and in many of the cases the test is stated in terms which generally distinguish between ‘business’ and ‘pleasure’. Thus in Doggett v. Burnet, 62 App.D.C. 103 , 65 F.2d 191 , 194, the Court of Appeals of the .District of Columbia, said: ‘The proper test is not the reasonableness of the taxpayer’s belief that a profit will be realized, but whether it is entered in”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“is a very comprehensive term and embraces everything about which a person can be employed.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.