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6 B.T.A. 651

Briant v. Commissioner

United States Board of Tax Appeals

Decided March 30, 1927

United States Board of Tax Appeals · decided 1927-03-30

Amounts paid by an individual for legal services in the collection of a debt arising out of an ordinary business transaction are deductible from gross income in income-tax returns as ordinary and necessary expenses in computing net income under the Revenue Act of 1918.

Relies on Consolidated Mut. Oil Co. v. Commissioner · Appeal of McCandless · Butler v. Commissioner

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1927-03-30

How this case has been cited

Cited by 3 later decisions — most recently December 1962

1019271930194019501960decided

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.

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¶1*654OPINION.

Smith:

¶2The respondent has disallowed the deduction from gross income in J. D. Sugg’s return for 1919 of $32,848 for attorneys’ fees, upon the ground that they were not ordinary and necessary expenses paid or incurred during the taxable year in carrying on a trade or business, and cites in support of his action Laemmle v. Eisner, 275 Fed. 504; Appeal of Consolidated Mutual Oil Co., 2 B. T. A. 1067; Appeal of Gilbert Butler, 4 B. T. A. 756; Appeal of Lincoln L. McCandless, 5 B. T. A. 1114; and Kornhauser v. United States, 62 Ct. Cls. 647.

¶3We have carefully considered these decisions but are of the opinion that they are nofe strictly in point. In the case at bar, J. D. Sugg *655paid attorneys’ fees in 1919 in connection with the collection of a debt which arose out of an ordinary business transaction. We think that it is immaterial that he bought in at a foreclosure sale the property which had been mortgaged to him as security for the debt. He did not desire to purchase the property and gave specific instructions to his attorneys not to bid it in, if the property sold at a price in excess of his indebtedness. We think that the amount paid as attorneys’ fees in 1919 was a legal deduction from gross income under section 214(a) (1) of the Revenue Act of 1918.

¶4Judgment will he entered on 15 days’ notice, under Rule 50.

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