Smith v. Commissioner’s Empirical Analysis
1939
Citation profile
6 federal appellate ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 33 later decisions — most recently March 2011 · most notably Kroll v. Commissioner (1968), International Artists, Ltd. v. Commissioner (1970)
6 federal appellate ·
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 Welch v. Helvering · Powell v. Commissioner · M. & T. Trust Co. v. Export Steamship Corp. · Hutchison v. Commissioner · Bourne 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 33 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“But we think its principle is clear. It may for practical purposes be said to constitute a distinction between those activities which, as a matter of common acceptance and universal experience, are “ordinary” or usual as the direct accompaniment of business pursuits, on the one hand; and those which, though they may in some indirect and tenuous degree relate to the circumstances of a profitable occupation, are nevertheless personal in their nature, of a character applicable to human beings generally, and which exist on that plane regardless of the occupation, though not necessarily of the station in life, of the individuals concerned. * * * [ 40 B.T.A. at 1039-1049 ]”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“This thought evokes an array of interesting possibilities. The fee to the doctor, but for whose healing service the earner of the family income could not leave his sickbed;1 'the cost of the laborer’s raiment, for how can the world proceed about its business unclothed; the very home which gives us shelter and rest and the food which provides energy, might all by an extension of the same proposition be construed as necessary to the operation of business and to the creation of income. Yet these are the very essence of those “personal” expenses the deductibility of which is expressly denied. * * * [Footnote omitted. 40 B.T.A. at 1038-1039 ]”
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.