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12 T.C. 342

Hanover v. Commissioner

United States Tax Court

Decided March 11, 1949

United States Tax Court · decided 1949-03-11

Deductions -- Losses -- Taxpayer on Cash Basis, Business on Accrual Basis. -- A taxpayer, filing his returns upon a cash basis, is not entitled to deduct from his gross income in 1942 and 1943 his share of the payments made in those years on notes given in 1940 for the purchase of oil property which was sold at a loss in 1940, where the books for the operations of that and other oil properties were kept upon an accrual basis and the taxpayer properly claimed the loss in 1940…

Relies on Helvering v. Price · Stern v. Commissioner · J. E. Mergott Co. v. Commissioner

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decision will be entered for the respondent · Decided 1949-03-11

How this case has been cited

Cited by 3 later decisions — most recently July 1960

1 federal appellate ·

10194919501960decided

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.

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¶1OPINION.

MuRdook, Judge:

¶2The petitioner concedes that the disallowance of the claimed deduction of a net loss carry-over for 1942 was proper, since the 1941 income would have absorbed any such loss from 1940. He now claims that he is entitled to deduct, in the years paid, the amounts which he paid on the notes given in 1940 when they purchased the only outstanding interest in the John Johnson lease. He argues that such deductions are proper for 1942 and 1943 because he filed his returns upon the cash basis and was not entitled to deduct a loss upon the sale of his interest in the John Johnson lease until he paid the purchase price. Citing Helvering v. Price, 309 U. S. 409. If this was simply a loss from the sale of a capital asset by a taxpayer upon a cash basis, then the evidence fails to show the basis for gain or loss of the property upon which the loss is claimed, and the total claimed exceeds the only apparent loss in the amount of $1,700. However, it does not appear that this was merely a loss from the sale of a capital asset by a taxpayer upon a cash basis. It appears, instead, that books upon accrual basis were kept for the operation involving the John Johnson lease, and the 1940 deduction, including a stated loss from the disposition of the “equipment or lease,” was claimed in accordance with those books. A taxpayer reporting some personal income upon a cash basis may, nevertheless, for the same year report income or claim deductions or losses from a separate business which uses an accrual system of accounting, Joseph Stern, 14 B. T. A. 838; Berryman D. Fincannon, 2 T. C. 216, and where he claims a loss properly accrued upon the books of the business he may not thereafter claim another deduction when he makes some cash payment representing all or a part of his share of the loss. Cf. Cornelia V. Cecil, 37 B. T. A. 904; affirmed on this point, 100 Fed. (2d) 896; J. E. Mergott Co., 11 T. C. 47. It does not appear that the loss in question was improperly accrued on the books kept for the lease operations for 1940 or that the Commissioner erred in holding that no part of the loss was deductible for 1942 and 1943.

¶3Decision will he entered for the respondent.

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