Walker v. Commissioner’s Empirical Analysis
1937
Citation profile
How this case has been cited
Cited by 9 later decisions — most recently July 2004
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 Von Gunten v. Commissioner · Peabody v. Commissioner
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 9 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“As we understand tbe first in, first out rule and the other methods for allocating cost, they are not rules of law in the strict sense, but merely rules of convenience or rules of thumb for making effective in several common situations the provision- of the statute that a taxpayer can recover his cost before becoming taxable on any gain. The rules for allocation of basis are not ends in themselves, but only means to the end of returning to the taxpayer his capital investment free from tax, and if they have partially accomplished this result, even through what was perhaps an erroneous application of one method in a situation which more properly called for another, still we do not think it is now appropriate to apply retroactively a theoretically correct method and get an erroneous result. To apply petitioner’s proposal here would leave him in 1930 with a larger basis than actually remains to him in view of the amount of the basis used in computing his gain on the earlier sales. It would result in his recovery of part of his basis twice. What has happened here is that the petitioner recovered $10,600 of his $14,110 basis prior to 1930, leaving $3,510 to be recovered. The statute authorizes the recovery of basis only once. With the exact basis susceptible of determination, and with all the stock, finally disposed of, we think it would be error to substitute for the facts a theory which distorts the actual gain or loss. * * *”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“Dealings in stock on a 'when issued' basis are not sales of stock, but merely sales of contracts to sell stock which are made on the express condition that no delivery and payment are required unless and until the stock is issued.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.