Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

28 B.T.A. 611

Wheelock v. Commissioner

United States Board of Tax Appeals · decided 1933-07-06

1. Discovery value for the purpose of computing depletion on petitioners' interest in a producing oil lease determined. 2. The petitioners are not entitled to deductions for depreciation in 1923 where the depreciable property was sold in 1924, and tax liability on profit from such sale settled under section 606 of the Revenue Act of 1928 without adjustment for depreciation in 1923. 3.

Relies on W. C. Mitchell Co. v. Commissioner

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1933-07-06

How this case has been cited

Cited by 7 later decisions — most recently January 1960

1 district ·

301933194019501960decided

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 →

Leech,

¶1dissenting: The majority opinion sustains the respondent’s disallowance of petitioners’ admittedly correct depreciation deduction for 1923, solely on the ground of an estoppel said to be raised by respondent’s establishing a bare agreement, without any of the considerations involved therein, executed under section 606 of the Revenue Act of 1928, closing petitioners’ tax liability for 1924.

¶2This Board has held that such an agreement “ bars only the reopening of tax liability for the year covered thereby and in no way estops the petitioner from pleading and proving any fact overlooked in such year but related to the tax of a subsequent year. To hold otherwise would permit the perpetuation of an error to affect tax liability for subsequent years, a result quite as likely to be prejudicial to the revenue as beneficial to taxpayers and one which, in our opinion, was not within the intention of Congress when section 606 of the Revenue Act of 1928 was enacted.” W. C. Mitchell Co., 27 B.T.A. 645. Cf. Hering v. Tait, 65 Fed. (2d) 703.

¶3A fortiori, such an estoppel cannot be created as to a tax liability for a prior year; certainly not unless a legal basis of fact is established therefor by the respondent, who here asserts it. In my opinion, the present record discloses no such basis. I therefore dissent on this point.

SteeNhageN, Trammell, McMahoh, and Black agree with this dissent.
/28/bta/611 · .json · Public domain