Lynch v. Turrish’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

90 federal appellate · 9 district · 42 state decisions

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 222 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “On the main point we have no question that the learned District Judge was right. The first paragraph of Subdivision B of section 2 of the Act of October 3, 1913 ( 38 Stat. 167 ), provides that the income taxable “shall include gains, profits, and income derived from * * * sales or dealings in property, whether real or personal, growing out of the ownership or use of or interest in real or personal property, * * * or gains or profits and income derived from any source whatever, including the income from but not the value of property acquired by gift, bequest, devise, or descent.” This is the only relevant enactment, and the question is whether it includes “ gains • * * * derived from sales” of personal property acquired by gift. Section 2(a) of the Act of September 8, 1916 (Comp. St. § 6336b), defines taxable income in the same language, but omits the words “including the income from but not the value of,” etc., just quoted. These occur, however, in section 4 of that act (Comp. St. § 6336d), among the exemptions allowed as follows: “The value of property acquired by gift, bequest, devise or descent (but the income from such property shall be included as income).” "We can see no conceivable difference between the meaning of the two statutes; the fact that in the first the exemption is coupled with the definition of the taxable income, while in the second it is placed among the exemptions, is of no consequence whatever. That appreciation in the corpus of property received upon b”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. United States v. Phellis · Straight v. Commissioner

2. ““In the present case there was no winding up or liquidation of the Cloquet Lumber Company, nor any surrender of Hornby’s stock. * * * The operations of this company in the year 1914 were, according to the facts pleaded, of a nature essentially like those in which it had been engaged for more than a quarter of a century. The fact that they resulted in converting into money, and thus setting free for distribution as dividends a part of its surplus assets accumulated prior to March 1,1913, does not render Hornby’s share of those dividends any the less a part of his income within the true intent and meaning of the act, * * *. “Hence we construe the provision of the act that ‘the net income of a taxable person shall include gains, profits, and income derived from * * interest, rent, dividends, * * * or gains or profits and income derived from any source whatever’ as including (for the purposes of the additional tax) all dividends declared and paid in the ordinary course of business by a corporation to its stockholders .after the taking effect of the act (March 1, 1913), whether from current earnings, or from the accumulated surplus made up of past earnings or increase in value of corporate assets, notwithstanding it accrued to the corporation in whole or in part prior to March 1, 1913. In short, the word ‘dividends’ was employed in the act as descriptive of one kind of gain to the individual stockholder; dividends being treated as the tangible and recurrent returns upon his stock,”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Cobb v. Galloway

3. ““The government, however, makes its view depend upon disputable differences between certain words of the two acts. It urges that the act of 1913 makes the income taxed one ‘arising or accruing’ in the preceding calendar year, while the act of 1867 makes the income one ‘derived.’ Granting that there is a shade of difference between the words, it cannot be granted that Congress made that shade a criterion of intention and committed the construction of'its legislation to the disputes of purists. Besides, the contention of the government does not reach the principle of Gray v. Darlington, which is that the gradual advance in the value of property during a series of years in no just sense can be ascribed to a particular year, not therefore as ‘arising or accruing,’ to meet the challenge of the words, in the last one of the years, as the government contends, and taxable as income for that year or when turned into cash. Indeed, the case decides that such advance in value is not income at all, but merely increase of capital and not subject to a tax as income.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Brewster v. Walsh