Conway v. United States

168 F. Supp. 656, 2 A.F.T.R.2d (RIA) 6117, 1958 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3330
CourtDistrict Court, D. Massachusetts
DecidedSeptember 16, 1958
DocketCiv. A. No. 54-580
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 168 F. Supp. 656 (Conway v. United States) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. Massachusetts primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Conway v. United States, 168 F. Supp. 656, 2 A.F.T.R.2d (RIA) 6117, 1958 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3330 (D. Mass. 1958).

Opinion

FRANCIS J. W. FORD, District Judge.

This is an action under 28 U.S.C.A. § 1346(a)(1) to recover alleged overpayments of Federal income tax for the calendar years 1940, 1942, 1943, 1944, 1945, 1947, and 1948. The United States counterclaims for the unpaid balances of the deficiencies assessed for those years.

Plaintiff is a dentist who has been practicing in Holyoke since 1929. The first Tax return ever filed by plaintiff was filed in 1935, although since 1929 he had been earning each year sufficient income so that he should have filed a tax return. His tax returns for the years 1939 through 1948 showed net income and tax liability as follows:

Year Net Income Tax Due

1939 11,205.45 $ 5.73

1940 1,716.22 28.06

1941 1,315.00 51.24

1942 1,395.00 161.68

1943 1,703.96 217.26

1944 2,100.00 248.00

1945 2,525.08 365.76

1946 2,993.10 382.70

1947 3,760.83 539.01

1948 4,189.65 469.28

For the years 1934 through 1938 the total tax liability reported was small and plaintiff paid at most a few dollars in taxes.

The only financial record maintained by plaintiff was a day book which contains a list of patients, work performed for them, the amount charged, and the amount of payment received. Plaintiff says that this is a complete record of all the money received from his dental practice. There was no record of expenses, which plaintiff said he paid in cash, and there was no record of income received from other sources.

In 1949 agents of the Internal Revenue Service began an investigation of plaintiff’s affairs in conjunction with an auditing of his returns for the years 1939 through 1948. The investigation disclosed a gross understatement of plaintiff’s income in his returns for those years. The income reported was less than the amount of the receipts shown in the doctor’s day books. No report was made in the returns of numerous other items of income received by plaintiff during these years — interest on numerous substantial deposits in savings banks, on Loans made to the Service Plan Banking Company and to individuals, and on Unit[658]*658ed States Treasury bonds, dividend earnings on plaintiff’s security holdings, fees and salary received by him as a director of the Service Plan Banking Company. Investigation also disclosed that during these years plaintiff purchased a total of $100,000 in United States government bonds, made numerous bank deposits ($20,000 in 1942) and made substantial loans to the Service Plan Banking Company and to friends.

On the basis of the facts uncovered by this investigation and using the net worth and source and application of funds method, the Internal Revenue Service reconstructed plaintiff’s income for these years and assessed additional taxes and fraud penalties as follows:

Additional Year Tax Fraud Penalty Total

1939 $ 542.77 $ 271.39 $ 814.16

1940 1,281.82 640.91 1,922.73

1941 1,173.20 586.60 1,759.80

1942 18,916.59 9,458.20 28,374.86

1943 8,264.06 4,132.03 12,396.09

1944 23,950.94 11.975.47 35,926.41

1945 23,544.71 11,772.36 35,317.07

1946 9,610.05 4,805.02 14,415.07

1947 21,059.56 10,529.78 31,589.34

1948 8,013.78 4,006.89 12,020.67

Total $116,357.48 $58,178.74 $174,536.22

After the investigation was begun, plaintiff employed the services of a firm of certified public accountants to audit his accounts and records. Except for one aspect to be discussed below, these accountants are in agreement with the Internal Revenue Service’s reconstruction of plaintiff’s income. Certain payments have been made by plaintiff on his tax liability since 1950 and additional amounts have been seized by the United States. As a result the government has received more than the tax liability computed by plaintiff’s accountants and plaintiff seeks to recover this excess. However, the full amount of the deficiency assessed has not been paid for any of these years and it is for these remaining unpaid balances that the United States seeks judgment on its counterclaim.

In their reconstruction of plaintiff’s income, the revenue agents first determined that the plaintiff’s net worth in 1939 was approximately $21,000, consisting of securities and a small savings bank deposit. The increase in net worth was determined for each subsequent year and an itemized list was made of income from all explained sources such as interest, dividends, director’s fees and salaries. The unexplained income, that is, the difference between the increase in net worth and the total of the explained items, was attributed to professional income and the tax liability was computed on that basis.

The only real issue with respect to these computations is as to the correctness of the amount of plaintiff’s net worth in 1939. Plaintiff’s explanation is that in addition to the $21,000 in verifiable security holdings and bank deposits, he had in 1939 a cash hoard of approximately $55,000. He says that even before 1929, while he was still a student, he had saved part of his earnings and continued to do so after he began the practice of dentistry, that this practice was successful and his annual income gradually rose so that in the years just before 1939 he was making approximately $10,000 a year. Most of this money [659]*659was saved since he continued to live in his parents’ home and kept his living expenses down to about $1,000 a year. He says that from time to time he would place cash in a drawer in the sideboard in the dining room and that by 1939 these hoardings had accumulated to approximately $55,000.

The difference between the computations of the revenue agents and those of plaintiff’s accountants is based on the fact that the latter accepted plaintiff’s story of the $55,000 and also accepted his day books as a correct statement of his professional income. Any difference between the increase in net worth and the explained sources of income was attributed by them to withdrawals from this cash hoard.

Plaintiff’s story of this cash accumulation cannot be accepted. In itself it is difficult to believe that a man of plaintiff’s education and business ability would pile up such a huge sum in a sideboard drawer. There is not a scrap of evidence to corroborate his story that any cash hoard at all existed. His sole explanation for keeping such large sums in this way, namely, that savings banks would not accept deposits during those years, falls in the light of the testimony of the officers of several banks in Holyoke and its vicinity that during those years they did in fact readily accept new deposits up to the legally allowable limits. Moreover, the records of the account which he did have show numerous withdrawals of small amounts from time to time, a proceeding inconsistent with the story that he had large sums in cash readily at hand in a sideboard drawer at home. It must be found that the correct amount of plaintiff’s net worth in 1939 was that determined by the revenue agents.

Plaintiff further contends that it was improper for the government to use the net worth method of determining his income because he maintained adequate financial records which the agents disregarded. The only financial records he kept were the office day books.

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168 F. Supp. 656, 2 A.F.T.R.2d (RIA) 6117, 1958 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3330, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/conway-v-united-states-mad-1958.