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21 B.T.A. 1046

O'Shaughnessy v. Commissioner

United States Board of Tax Appeals

Decided December 31, 1930

United States Board of Tax Appeals · decided 1930-12-31

1. Where the question is raised as to the constitutionality of a provision of the taxing act, the Board will consider it. Where, after consideration, a substantial doubt remains, the statute will be followed until the doubt is dispelled by a court decision. Where such question involves the consideration of many decisions of the Supreme Court, from which differing conclusions may reasonably be reached, the Board will follow the words of the statute. 2.

Relies on Reinecke v. Northern Trust Co. · Knox v. McElligott · Emery v. Commissioner

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1930-12-31

How this case has been cited

Cited by 13 later decisions — most recently May 1969

901930194019501960decided

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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Black,

¶1concurring: I concur in the result reached by the majority opinion, but I do not share the doubts expressed therein as to the constitutional validity of that part of section 302 of the Revenue Act of 1926 which requires the inclusion as a part of the decedent’s gross estate of the value at the time of his death of the interest held as joint tenants by the decedent and any other person “ whether made, created, arising, existing, exercised or relinquished before or after the enactment of this Act.” I think that Tyler v. United States, 278 U. S. 339, although involving tenancies by the entirety rather than joint tenancies, is decisive of the question of the constitutional validity of the statute in question.

¶2In the instant case the decedent died August 1, 1926, and the joint tenancy was created July 22, 1921, while the Revenue Act of 1918 *1051was in full force and effect. In this sort of a situation I do not think the decision in Knox v. McElligott, 258 U. S. 546, is applicable. My reasons for holding this view are more fully stated in a dissenting opinion which I have filed in Mary Allen Emery, Executrix, 21 B. T. A. 1038, and which it is unnecessary to repeat at this time.

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