First Nat'l Bank v. Commissioner

64 T.C. 1001, 1975 U.S. Tax Ct. LEXIS 72
United States Tax Court·Decided September 3, 1975·No. Docket No. 3408-72·Published·Cited by 2 cases

Opinion

Fay, Judge:

Respondent determined a deficiency of $419,253.17 in the Federal income tax of petitioner, the First National Bank of Chicago, for the year 1968. Certain concessions having been made, it remains for us to decide if respondent properly disallowed a portion of the deduction claimed by petitioner for an addition to its reserve for bad debts. Sec. 166(c), I.R.C. 1954.1

FINDINGS OF FACT

Many of the facts pertinent to this case have been stipulated and are so found.

Petitioner is a national banking association. It filed a U.S. corporation income tax return for the year in issue with the District Director of Internal Revenue, Chicago, Ill. Petitioner’s principal place of business was in that same city when the petition herein was filed.

Petitioner serves as the trustee for numerous individual trust and similar accounts. In accordance with regulations issued by the comptroller of the currency, petitioner conducts and accounts for this aspect of its business apart from the others, through its trust department.2

The trust department maintains an account ledger for each trust which includes: an income account which reflects the amount of cash held for the income beneficiary of the trust; a principal account which reflects the amount of cash held for the principal beneficiary; and a securities account which reflects the purchases and sales of all kinds of securities held by the trust, in units rather than dollars.

From time to time, petitioner’s trust department makes cash payments on behalf of the trusts which it administers. Each of these payments is chargeable to either the income or the principal account of the trust on behalf of which it is made. When the account to be charged contains insufficient cash to cover a payment, a negative balance called an overdraft results. A transaction that will result in an overdraft will be authorized by a trust officer only when ultimate restoration of the overdraft is reasonably certain. Sources from which repayment is typically anticipated are: periodic returns on trust investments such as dividends and interest; proceeds realized on the liquidation of the trust’s investments in securities; additional contributions to the trust by the donor; and funds on deposits with petitioner in existing savings and checking accounts, provided authorization for the release of such funds is obtained from the customer in whose name the account is maintained.

No note is ever executed to evidence an overdraft; neither is a maturity date fixed nor interest charged. Losses incurred by petitioner on overdrafts have been minimal.

When a cash payment is made in an amount which exceeds the balance in the income or principal account to be charged, the additional funds needed to cover the payment are obtained by petitioner’s trust department from its commercial loan department through the following device. Each day, the trust department summarizes by trust, the principal and income overdrafts that were outstanding at the close of the preceding working day. If the summaries disclose that on a particular day there was a net increase in overdrafts outstanding over the prior day, the trust department requests a cash advance in the amount of the net increase from the commercial loan department. Such an advance is called a trust department advance (TDA). TDA’s are entered on petitioner’s books as loans receivable and on the books of the trust department as liabilities. If a daily summary indicates that there has been a net decrease in overdrafts outstanding, the TDA account is commensurately reduced.

Since 1921 petitioner has claimed deductions for bad debts by maintaining a bad debt reserve and by taking deductions for additions to the reserve annually under section 166(c). For the years 1947 through 1964 additions to the reserve were computed by petitioner in accordance with the provisions of Mim. 6209,1947-2 C.B. 26. Additions for subsequent years including the year in issue were computed under the uniform reserve ratio method provided for in sections 3 through 6 of Rev. Rul. 65-92, 1965-1 C.B. 112.

In making computations under Mim. 6209 and Rev. Rul. 65-92, petitioner has always included the balance in its TDA account in its loan base. On December 31, 1968, the outstanding balance in the account was $19,136,794.50.

Statutory notice of the deficiency at issue herein was mailed on March 9,1972.

OPINION

Section 166(a) provides that in computing taxable income, a taxpayer may claim deductions for debts which became worthless during the taxable year and, under certain circumstances, for debts which are recoverable only in part and are charged off within the taxable year. Section 166(c) provides that in lieu of any deductions allowable under section 166(a), the taxpayer will, at his option, be allowed a deduction for a reasonable addition to a reserve for bad debts.

The use of the reserve method for deducting bad debts is subject to the reasonable discretion of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue. Sec. 166(c). In an exercise of this discretion he issued Mim. 6209, 1947-2 C.B. 26, on December 8, 1947. Mim. 6209 provided as follows at pages 26-27:

1. The Bureau [now the Internal Revenue Service] has given careful and extended consideration to the situation of banks in general with respect to the use of reserves for bad debts, the proper measure of such reserves, and amounts to be allowed as deductions.
2. In determining a reasonable annual addition to a reserve for bad debt by a bank it is believed to be fair and sufficiently accurate to resort to the average annual bad-debt loss of the bank over a period of 20 years, to include the taxable year, as constituting a representative period in the bank’s history and to accept the equivalent percentage of presently outstanding loans as indicative of the probable annual accruing loss. * * *

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First Nat'l Bank v. Commissioner, 64 T.C. 1001, 1975 U.S. Tax Ct. LEXIS 72 (tax 1975).

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First Nat'l Bank v. Commissioner
64 T.C. 1001 (U.S. Tax Court, 1975)