Taft v. Bowers’s Empirical Analysis
278 U.S. 470 · 1929
Citation profile
88 federal appellate · 8 district · 6 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 234 later decisions (62 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2024 · most notably Helvering v. Gowran (1937), Heiner v. Donnan (1932)
88 federal appellate · 8 district · 6 state decisions
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.
Appellate journey
reviewedthe decision below (from Second Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Eisner v. Macomber · United States v. Phellis · Irwin v. Gavit
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 234 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““ ‘Income may be defined as the gain derived from capital, from labor, or from both combined,’ provided it be understood to include profit gained through a sale or conversion of capital assets.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““ * * * By requiring the recipient of the entire increase to pay a part into the public treasury, Congress deprived her of no right and subjected her to no hardship. She accepted the gift with knowledge of the statute and, as to the property received, voluntarily assumed the position of her donor. When she sold the stock she actually got the original sum invested, plus the entire appreciation and out of the latter only was she called on to pay the tax demanded. 3 3 3.3 3 * “There is nothing in the Constitution which lends support to the theory that gain actually resulting from the increased value of capital can be treated as taxable income in the hands of the recipient only so far as the increase occurred while he owned the property. And Irwin v. Gavit, 268 U. S. 161 , 167, 45 S. Ct. 475 , 69 L. Ed. 897 , is to the contrary.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority““The ‘gain derived from capital,’ within the definition, is ‘not a gain accruing to capital, nor a growth or increment of value in the investment, but a gain, a profit, something of exchangeable value proceeding from the property, severed from the capital however invested, and coming in, that is, received or drawn by the claimant for his separate use, benefit and disposal.’ ””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.