Trent v. Commissioner’s Empirical Analysis
1961
Citation profile
52 federal appellate · 3 district · 1 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 146 later decisions (3 by the Supreme Court) — most recently September 2018 · most notably Commissioner of Internal Revenue v. P Groetzinger (1987), Whipple v. Commissioner (1963)
52 federal appellate · 3 district · 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 Deputy v. du Pont · Higgins v. Commissioner · Kalb v. Feuerstein · Putnam v. Commissioner · Burnet v. Clark
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 146 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““We shall take next a much simpler story, the familiar provision, now § 162(a), which allows a taxpayer to deduct ‘all the ordinary and necessary expenses paid or incurred during the taxable year in carrying on any trade or business.’ Here the decided weight of authority long has been that a corporate officer may deduct expenses paid or incurred which were incident to the ‘trade or business’ of being a corporate employee although they may also have been incident to the corporation’s own trade- or business. C. I. R. v. People’s Pittsburgh Trust Co., 3 Cir., 1932, 60 F.2d 187 [legal expenses of board chairman in defending against, charges of unlawful filing of tax returns] ; Schmidlapp v. C. I. R., 2 Cir., 1938, 96 F.2d 680 [ 118 A.L.R. 297 ] [unreimbursed entertainment] ; Hochschild v. C. I. R., 2 Cir., 1947, 181 F.2d 817 [expenses of corporate officer in defending suit arising out of his duties]; Noland v. C. I. R., 4 Cir., 1959, 269 F.2d 108, 111 [statement that ‘every person who works for a compensation is engaged in the business of earning his pay’; particular expenses disallowed]; see Griswold, Cases on Federal Taxation (1960), p. 327.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“every person who works for compensation is engaged in the business of earning his pay . . . . The business of a corporation, however, is not that of its officers, employees or stockholders. Though the individual stockholder-executive, in his own mind, may identify his interest and business with those of the corporation, they legally are distinct, and, ordinarily, if he voluntarily pays or guarantees the corporation’s obligations, his expense may not be deducted on his personal return.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“the courts have properly assumed that the term includes all means of gaining a livelihood by work, even those which would scarcely be so characterized in common speech.”
2 later decisions 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.