Cushman v. Commissioner

4 T.C. 512, 1944 U.S. Tax Ct. LEXIS 2
CourtUnited States Tax Court
DecidedDecember 27, 1944
DocketDocket No. 110284
StatusPublished
Cited by9 cases

This text of 4 T.C. 512 (Cushman v. Commissioner) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering United States Tax Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Cushman v. Commissioner, 4 T.C. 512, 1944 U.S. Tax Ct. LEXIS 2 (tax 1944).

Opinions

OPINION.

Tyson, Judge:

Respondent determined that the net income of the “L. A. Cushman, Jr. Trust” in 1938 in the sum of $18,714.81 is taxable to the petitioner, grantor thereof, under the provisions of sections 22 (a), 166, and 167 of the Revenue Act of 1938. His only contentions are that the net income is taxable to the petitioner under sections 22 (a) and 167. We shall now consider respondent’s contention that the net income of the trust is taxable to petitioner under section 22 (a).

Paragraph 6 of the trust instrument provides that the trust is to be irrevocable and that the grantor “hereby surrenders all interest in the property constituting the trust estate.”

The two children were minors in the taxable year. At no time has anj' trust income been used for their education, maintenance, or support, or been otherwise applied for their use or benefit. Except for payment of the expenses of trust administration and taxes, it has been accumulated, and it is the accumulation of $18,714.81 during the taxable year which is the basis of the deficiency herein. The petitioner was financially able to, and in fact did, support the children at all times since the trust was established.

Under the laws of the State of New York, the father is under a primary duty to support and educate his minor children. Lillian M. Newman, 1 T. C. 921, 926, and cases cited therein.

Paragraph 2 of the trust instrument provides that the trustees, who were petitioner and his wife, should “hold, manage, invest and reinvest” the trust estate, “shall collect the income therefrom,” and after paying all trust expenses and taxes, “shall pay to or apply the same to the use of the children of Grantor * * Similar provisions apply to the “children and issue of any deceased child” during the life of the surviving child. Under this provision of paragraph 2, we think the trustees clearly had the right in their discretion to apply the current net income, or at least so much as was necessary, to the maintenance, support, and education of the minor children, cf. David M. Heyman, 44 B. T. A. 1009, 1016, 1018, unless, as specified in paragraph ' 5, they chose to exercise the right “to accumulate [the net income] for the account of Grantor’s said children * * * during their respective minorities.”

Under paragraph 4 of the trust instrument, the following controls were reserved to petitioner in his individual capacity as “grantor”: (1) “Trustees shall from time to time, but only upon the written direction of Grantor * * * sell any or all of the property constituting the trust estate at the prices and upon the terms contained in such direction”; (2) “Trustees shall invest and reinvest any funds held in the trust estate in such stocks, bonds and securities of corporations, domestic or foreign, and/or governments, domestic or foreign, or in other property and at such prices and upon such terms as may be contained from time to time in written directions from Grantor during his lifetime and competence * * (3) subject to limitations imposed by (1) and (2) above, the “Trustees may become a party to any reorganization, consolidation, merger or other capital readjustment of any corporation, the stocks or securities of which may at any time be held in the trust, and may participate therein in all respects, as fully as though they were the individual owners of such stocks or securities.”

In Frank G. Hoover, 42 B. T. A. 786, we considered a 1situation which is very similar to the one presented here. In that case the taxpayer created a trust which, as it related to the taxable year 1935, was irrevocable until January 1, 1936, at which time the trust would terminate if the taxpayer were then living, and the corpus would revert to him. If the taxpayer were not then living the trust would continue during the life of the wife, who was named beneficiary of the net income for life, to be paid her quarterly or at such times as she might request. A bank was named as trustee and the corpus of the trust consisted of stock in a corporation in which the taxpayer was actively interested. The taxpayer reserved to himself as grantor the right to instruct the trustee as to any change in investment, both as to the principal fund and as to the income that might not be distributed. He also reserved during his lifetime the right or proxy to vote or to direct the voting of the stock covered by the trusteeship. By means of an addition to the trust instrument, apparently inserted and dated December 26,1935, the taxpayer also reserved to himself as grantor the right to substitute a trustee for the one named in the trust instrument.

We held the net income of the trust for 1935 to be taxable to the taxpayer-grantor. We stated that it might be argued that the provision that the grantor could substitute a trustee would render inapplicable the doctrine of Helvering v. Clifford. We then proceeded to say:

Omitting the power to substitute trustees, petitioner had still contrived to retain in himself, “so long as I live the right to instruct the trustee as to any change in such investment both as to principal fund as well as the income thereof that may not be distributed * * ; “to vote or direct the voting of the stock covered by this trusteeship”; “the trustor himself during his lifetime more or less directing investments”; to obtain the reversion of the corpus on January 1,1936, unless otherwise directed by him; and, in the meantime, to have the income remain in the family and be paid to petitioner’s wife, or if the wife had died to be paid over to trusts established by petitioner for the benefit of his children in his will. The “principal investment” of the trust was stock of the company in which petitioner was “actively interested.”

After comparing the aspects set out in the above excerpt from the opinion with the substance of the Supreme Court’s conclusion in Helvering v. Clifford, 309 U. S. 331, we concluded that the grantor of the trust was taxable with the net income thereof in the year 1935 on the principle of that case as applied to section 22 (a), saying with regard to the grantor:

He does control the form and manner of the investment of both principal and undistributed income. And he does remain in a position to participate in the affairs of the business in which he is actively interested, a prerogative which proceeds from the retained equivalent of ownership of his interest in that enterprise. This is an attribute of proprietorship frequently of greater significance than the right to receive income. When we combine it with the power to force the retention of that Investment and the “benefits flowing to him indirectly through the wife” we can not avoid the conclusion that “With that control in his hands he would keep direct command over all that he needed to remain in substantially the same financial situation as before.”

In the Hoover case, as here, the taxpayer created a trust in which he retained, as grantor, the absolute control of investments and rein-vestments of a trust corpus consisting of stocks in a corporation in which he was actively interested and the accumulations of income therefrom.

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Cushman v. Commissioner
4 T.C. 512 (U.S. Tax Court, 1944)

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Bluebook (online)
4 T.C. 512, 1944 U.S. Tax Ct. LEXIS 2, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/cushman-v-commissioner-tax-1944.