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16 T.C. 1248

Ferguson v. Commissioner

United States Tax Court

Decided May 31, 1951

United States Tax Court · decided 1951-05-31

Deductions -- Bad Debts -- Business or Nonbusiness. -- Petitioner advanced moneys to a corporation of which he was president-general manager. Held: he was not engaged in the business of promoting, organizing and managing business enterprises as claimed, and that the advances were nonbusiness debts within section 23 (k) (4), Internal Revenue Code.

Relies on Campbell v. Commissioner

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decision will be entered under Rule 50 · Decided 1951-05-31

How this case has been cited

Cited by 30 later decisions — most recently October 1977 · most notably Boissevain v. Commissioner (1951), Bihlmaier v. Commissioner (1951)

250195119601970decided

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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Tietjens, /.,

¶1dissenting: Contrary to the majority opinion, I think the finding should be that petitioner’s advances, when made, were proximately related to his business of promoting, organizing, and financing Wood Products, Inc., and that he was still engaged in that business when the debt became worthless. Accordingly, the debt was a business bad debt.

¶2I agree with the majority that the facts do not bear out the theory which petitioner stressed on brief, that his primary business was the promotion, etc. of businesses in the allied fields of wood construction and fabrication. Had that theory been substantiated, I have no doubt but that petitioner would have been entitled to deduct his loss. Vincent C. Campbell, 11 T. C. 510. I think a taxpayer can be engaged in the business of organizing, operating, and financing a single corporation as well as a number of corporations and that a taxpayer so engaged, as petitioner was here, should-be entitled to the same bad debt treatment as the taxpayer who finances and promotes several corporations.

¶3I respectfully dissent.

Murdock, J., agrees with this dissent.
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