Gatling v. Commissioner’s Empirical Analysis
1961
Citation profile
34 federal appellate · 1 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 68 later decisions — most recently September 2013 · most notably Nicholas v. Commissioner (1978), Armes v. Commissioner (1971)
34 federal appellate · 1 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.
Relationships
Relies on United States v. United States Gypsum Co. · Holland v. United States · Cohan v. Commissioner · Stern v. Board of Levee Commissioners · United States v. Massei
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 68 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Upon the basis of the whole record the Tax Court, following what has come to be known as the Cohan rule, exercised its best judgment and found as a fact that as of January 1, 1947, at the beginning of the net worth period, taxpayer had cash in the amount of $7,000 and that at the end of each of the years 1947 through 1950, taxpayer had at least $7,000 in cash. This was, under the facts available to the court, the best estimate that it was possible to make under the Cohan rule.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““Fraud cannot be lightly inferred but must be established by clear and convincing proof. * * * It is conceivable that taxpayers may make minor errors in their returns, or, owing to different or contradictory theories of tax computation, calculate returns which differ greatly in result from the Commissioner’s assessments. Here petitioners do not have that excuse. Discrepancies of 100% and more between the real net income and the reported income for three successive years strongly evidence an intent to defraud the government.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“[P]roof of consistent and substantial understatements of income over a period of years may constitute persuasive and convincing evidence of fraud.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. McHan v. Comm'r
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.