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15 B.T.A. 422

Watson v. Commissioner

United States Board of Tax Appeals

Decided February 14, 1929

United States Board of Tax Appeals · decided 1929-02-14

Where improved residential properties were purchased by partners as a joint investment, and pursuant to a decision reached in subsequent years the improvements were razed to make way for a building needed by the partnership business, that portion of the total cost of such properties which was allocable to the old improvements, less depreciation, is deductible in the year the demolition occurred.

Relies on Appeal of the First National Bank of Evanston · Ingle v. Commissioner · Burnside Steel Co. v. Commissioner

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1929-02-14

How this case has been cited

Cited by 3 later decisions — most recently April 1956

1 district ·

101929193019401950decided

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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¶1*424OPINION.

Siepjkin:

¶2All of the evidence is to the effect that the properties under discussion were purchased jointly by petitioners as an investment and that the decision to raze the buildings was not reached until early in 1922. We must, accordingly, reject the respondent’s contention that the case is governed by the decision in Arthur H. Ingle, 1 B. T. A. 595, which turned upon the fact that the taxpayer, when he purchased the property, expected to raze the improvements and devote the land to other uses.

¶3We have held in a number of cases that a deductible loss, measured by unextinguished cost, resulted where existing improvements were razed to make way for other buildings. First National Bank, 1 B. T. A. 9; Burnside Steel Co., 3 B. T. A. 20; J. H. Paget, 6 B. T. A. 310.

¶4The cost of improvements razed, or $12,000, less depreciation thereon at the rates claimed and allowed during the years intervening between the date of purchase and the year the demolition occurred, should be divided equally between petitioners as allowable deductions.

¶5Judgment will Toe entered under Bule 50.

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