Vayssie v. Commissioner

Decided October 7, 1927

United States Board of Tax Appeals · decided 1927-10-07

Where husband and wife in California erroneously file separate returns reporting their income on the community property basis and each make payments of the tax liability shown, and the Commissioner determines that the entire income should be taxed to the husband and tenders to the wife a refund of the amount paid by her, the husband is not entitled to have the amount due the wife credited against his tax liability.

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“the Commissioner to credit one taxpayer's account with a refund due another taxpayer.”

quoted by 1 later decision, including Crawford v. Commissioner

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1927-10-07

How this case has been cited

Cited by 8 later decisions — most recently September 1987

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 *589OPINION.

Trammell :

¶2Since the petitioner conceded the correctness of the deficiency for 1921, the action of the respondent in that respect is approved.

¶3There is no controversy as to the tax liability for 1920, the only question being whether the Commissioner should credit the petitioner’s account with the amount due to the wife as a refund. In our opinion, the Board has no authority to require the Commissioner to credit the petitioner’s account with a refund due to the petitioner’s wife. The Board can not require the Commissioner to credit one taxpayer’s account with a refund due another taxpayer.

¶4Reviewed by the Board.

¶5Judgment will be entered for the respondent.