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311 U.S. 513

Electro-Chemical Engraving Co. v. Commissioner

Supreme Court of the United States

Argued Dec. 12, 1940.

Decided Jan. 6, 1941.

Supreme Court of the United States · decided 1941-01-06

2 counsel of record

Relies on Helvering v. Hammel · Commissioner v. Hammel · Commissioner v. Electro-Chemical Engraving Co., Inc.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Affirmed · 8–1 · Opinion by Harlan Fiske Stone · Decided 1941-01-06

How this case has been cited

Cited by 100 later decisions (6 by the Supreme Court) — most recently November 1985 · most notably Dobson v. Commissioner (1944), Danenberg v. Commissioner (1979)

48 federal appellate · 3 district · 3 state decisions

92019411950196019701980decided

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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Mr. George P. Halperin, of New York City, for petitioner.

Messrs. Robert H. Jackson, Atty. Gen., and Norman D. Keller, Sp. Asst. to Atty. Gen., for respondent.

Mr. Justice STONE delivered the opinion of the Court.

¶1

This is a companion case to Helvering v. Hammel, 311 U.S. 504, 61 S.Ct. 368, 85 L.Ed. 303, decided this day.

¶2

The question is whether the loss suffered by petitioner on foreclosure sale of his mortgaged property, acquired for profit, may be deducted in full from gross income or only to the extent provided by § 117(d) of the 1934 Revenue Act, 26 U.S.C.A. Int.Rev.Acts, page 708. The statutory provisions involved are those of the 1934 Act relating to capital gains or losses, particularly 'losses from sales or exchanges of capital assets' considered in the Hammel case which are made applicable to petitioner, a corporation, by § 23(f), (j), 26 U.S.C.A. Int.Rev.Acts, pages 672, 673.

¶3

The Board of Tax Appeals ruled that petitioner's loss was deductible in full from its ordinary income. The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed the Board, 110 F.2d 614, holding that the loss sustained by petitioner was a loss from a sale of capital assets, § 23(j), which under § 117(d) could be deducted from the gross income only to the extent of capital gains, plus $2,000. We granted certiorari, 310 U.S. 622, 60 S.Ct. 1097, 84 L.Ed. 1395, so that the case might be considered with the conflicting decision of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in the Hammel case, Com'r of Internal Revenue v. Hammel, 108 F.2d 753. For the reasons stated in our opinion in the Hammel case we think that this case was rightly decided below.

¶4

Affirmed.

¶5

Mr. Justice ROBERTS dissents.

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