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13 T.C. 129

Albert v. Commissioner

United States Tax Court

Decided July 22, 1949

United States Tax Court · decided 1949-07-22

Deduction -- Traveling Expense -- Away From Home. -- A woman who worked in Lowell for more than two years is not entitled to deduct as traveling expenses (including the entire amount expended for meals and lodging) while away from home in pursuit of a trade or business amounts spent for meals and lodging in Lowell or for railroad or automobile transportation between Lowell and Gloucester, where she resided with her husband (apparently unemployed) and young son.

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“termination within a short period could be foreseen”

quoted by 9 later decisions, including Faircloth v. Commissioner, Beck v. Commissioner

Relies on Commissioner of Internal Revenue v. Flowers · Anderegg v. United States · Bixler v. Commissioner

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1949-07-22

How this case has been cited

Cited by 166 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently November 2015 · most notably Peurifoy v. Commissioner (1958), Kroll v. Commissioner (1968)

7 federal appellate · 1 district ·

59019491950196019701980199020002010decided

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.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

¶1OPINION.

Murdock, Judge:

¶2The Commissioner concedes that the expenditures were reasonable in amount and of the type that would be deduc-tibie in a proper case, but argues that this taxpayer’s post of duty or employment was in Lowell, and the expenditures were personal or living expenses due to the petitioner’s desire to continue to reside in Gloucester. Here, as in the cases of Commissioner v. Flowers, 326 U. S. 465, and Barnhill v. Commissioner, 148 Fed. (2d) 913, the taxpayer had but one job and, for personal reasons, rather than to prosecute or develop the business, chose to reside at a long established home away from this particular place of employment.

¶3This case is not distinguishable in principle from the early case of Mort L. Bixler, 5 B. T. A. 1181. The petitioner in that case was the husband, while here the wife is the petitioner, but in each the alleged traveler was, so far as the record shows, the only one in the family gainfully employed. The employment in each case lacked permanence, but, on the other hand, was indefinite in duration rather than obviously temporary, in that it was not the sort of employment in which termination within a short period could be foreseen, as was the situation in Harry F. Schurer, 3 T. C. 544, and E. G. Leach, 12 T. C. 20. The suggestion or warning that there might be a change of station upon short notice does not justify extensive discussion, since the evidence fails to show how probable this possibility was, except for the fact that the petitioner actually remained on duty in Lowell from 1943 until the end of 1945. Other cases similar to this one involving employment for a limited, indefinite period are Ney v. United States, 171 Fed. (2d) 449; certiorari denied, 336 U. S. 967; George W. Lindsay, 34 B. T. A. 840; John D. Johnson, 8 T. C. 303; and Robert F. Green, 12 T. C. 656.

¶4Commuting expenses have never been allowed as deductions. Frank H. Sullivan, 1 B. T. A. 93.

¶5Decision will be entered for the respondent.

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