Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

20 B.T.A. 428

Cunningham v. Commissioner

United States Board of Tax Appeals · decided 1930-07-31

1. Where a taxpayer is adjudicated a bankrupt after filing a petition with the Board, such adjudication does not oust the Board of jurisdiction. 2. Petitioner sustained a loss in 1925 by reason of payments made on debts of two corporations for which he became liable by indorsement. Held that such loss was not a net loss which can be deducted from 1926 income.

Relies on Harrington v. Commissioner · Crane v. Commissioner · Plains Buying & Selling Asso. v. Commissioner

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1930-07-31

How this case has been cited

Cited by 7 later decisions — most recently June 1975

1 federal appellate ·

3019301940195019601970decided

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 →

¶1*430OPINION.

Arundell:

¶2The question of jurisdiction raised at the hearing because of petitioner’s being adjudicated a bankrupt is settled by our decision in Plains Buying & Selling Association, 5 B. T. A. 1147, in which we held that where the adjudication occurs after the filing of a petition with the Board, the jurisdiction of the courts and the Board is concurrent.

¶3Petitioner’s claim is that the loss he sustained in 1925 by reason of payments made on the liabilities of the orchard and railroad com*431panies constitutes a net loss which should be allowed as a deduction from 1926 income. The argument is that the devotion by petitioner of a large part of his time and efforts to the financial affairs of the companies constituted engaging in a business within the meaning of the statute. We have held in a number of cases that losses sustained in the promoting of corporations have constituted net losses, but in such cases the evidence was that the taxpayer regularly carried on such business. See T. I. Crane, 17 B. T. A. 720; Edward H. Baker, 11 B. T. A. 733. The words “trade or business” as used in the statute refer to a regular occupation or calling of the taxpayer for the purpose of livelihood or profit and not to occasional or isolated transactions. J. J. Harrington, 1 B. T. A. 11; McLain Rogers v. United States, 41 Fed. (2d) 865. While those cases deal with losses on corporate stock, the same rules are applicable to the present case. While the petitioner undoubtedly invested in the companies originally with the hope of making a profit, it was exceedingly doubtful when he endorsed the notes of the companies that they would ever be financially successful, and so his subsequent activities in attempting to finance their debts can not be said to constitute a trade or business. Furthermore, while the winding up of the corporate business and the payment of debts extended over several years, these activities when viewed as a whole were but one transaction and this transaction was not of a sort regularly engaged in by petitioner.

¶4Decision will he entered for the respondent.

/20/bta/428 · .json · Public domain