521 F.2d 1065 - Melnik v. United States — 521 F.2d 1065

How this case has been cited

Cited by 15 later decisions — most recently May 2016

4 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.

¶1Richard L. Fishman, Beverly Hills, Cal., for plaintiffs-appellants.

¶2Scott P. Crampton, Gilbert E. Andrews, Robert G. Burt, Ernest J. Brown, Michael L. Paup, Tax Div., U. S. Dept. of Justice, Washington, D. C., William D. Keller, U. S. Atty., Los Angeles, Cal., for defendant-appellee.

¶3Before TRASK and CHOY, Circuit Judges, and von der HEYDT,* District Judge.

¶5OPINION

¶6PER CURIAM:

¶7The appeal in this tax case is from the action of the district court in granting summary judgment to the United States on a claim by the taxpayers for the de-ductibility of educational expenses.

¶8The district court applied Treasury Regulation § 1.162-5(b)(3) to Melnik, an Internal Revenue Agent doing field audits, and determined that his expenditures in acquiring a law degree were made to qualify him for a new trade of business and were, therefore, nondeductible. The taxpayers paid and sued for a refund. Melnik challenges the interpretation of the regulation by the court and also its constitutionality on fifth amendment due process grounds. The court below denied relief on both grounds, 73-2 U.S.Tax.Cas. 19521 (C.D. Cal.1973).

¶9A similar claim was made by a taxpayer and rejected by the tax court in Weiszmann v. Commissioner, 52 T.C. 1106 (1969), and we affirmed the decision. Weiszmann v. Commissioner, 443 F.2d 29 (9th Cir. 1971). That case is dispositive of the present appeal and we therefore affirm the decision of the district court.

¶10Judgment affirmed.