Harden v. Commissioner’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 federal appellate ·

Most-quoted passages

The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 13 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “The parties argue on the second point as to whether the municipal bond interest retained its exempt character when it came into the hands of the petitioner. He reported as his income all but the municipal interest of the amount which he received from the trust pursuant to the provisions of the agreement between him and the trust dated December 14, 1917. Those provisions as shown above required that the income from the perpetual care fund be added to the expense fund and the whole be used by the petitioner to pay various expenses of the business insofar as necessary. This record indicates that the amounts thus withdrawn by the petitioner during the taxable years would not affect his net income if properly reported because he used all of the money to pay expenses incurred in the operation of the cemetery. If he took the entire amount into his gross income in each year and then deducted it all as expenses, the result would be the same as it would be if he took none of it into his income and deducted none of it as expenses. Instead, he took part of it into his income and apparently deducted all of it as expenses. Consequently, the net result arrived at by the Commissioner's adjustments is a proper one because it puts the whole amount withdrawn into income and allows it to be entirely offset by deductions of the expenses for which the money was expended. The petitioner may not further reduce his income by excluding the part of the funds which came from municipal bond interest.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Memphis Memorial Park, Inc. v. Commissioner