Fouche v. Comm'r

6 T.C. 462, 1946 U.S. Tax Ct. LEXIS 265, 68 U.S.P.Q. (BNA) 420
CourtUnited States Tax Court
DecidedMarch 14, 1946
DocketDocket No. 5724
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 6 T.C. 462 (Fouche v. Comm'r) 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
Fouche v. Comm'r, 6 T.C. 462, 1946 U.S. Tax Ct. LEXIS 265, 68 U.S.P.Q. (BNA) 420 (tax 1946).

Opinion

OPINION.

Black, Judge:

Petitioner contends that he did not actually or constructively receive any part of the amount of $5,908.05, and that, if it be deemed that any part of such amount constitutes additional income to him in 1939, then he is entitled to deduct an amount equivalent thereto as either (a) an ordinary and necessary business expense or (b) as an annual depreciation of a depreciable capital asset.

The respondent contends that royalties in the amount of $5,908.05 which were payable to petitioner by the company in 1939 under the terms of a contract entered into between petitioner and the company under date of November 9, 1933, were constructively received by petitioner and constituted income to him under the provisions of section 22 (a) of the Internal Bevenue Code. We think the Commissioner must be sustained in this contention. Up to the date of the contract of November 9, 1933, the company had a right to manufacture and sell the Stayform garments without the payment of a royalty to anyone. This right extended from June 1,1927, to December 31,1940, by virtue of a contract which the company had with Hanskat, the owner of the patent and the trade-mark. By the contract of November 9, 1933, the company conveyed this contract right to petitioner for the considerations named in the contract and thereafter petitioner was not only the owner of the rights which he had acquired under the contracts with Hanskat on August 19 and October 21, 1933, but ho was also the owner of the rights which the company acquired from Hanskat in June 1927.

In the contract dated November 9, 1933, the company expressly agreed “to pay to the party of the second part [petitioner] a royalty of ten cents per garment on the gross sales of The StayeoRM Company-.” Plainly these royalties would have been paid direct to petitioner in the taxable year except for the fact that petitioner had, prior to the taxable year, assigned the contract to Hanskat “as security for the payments of royalty by myself to Rose Hanskat as provided for in the contract between the undersigned and Rose Hanskat.” The fact that under the foregoing assignment the royalties were paid direct to Hanskat rather than to petitioner does not make them any the less taxable to petitioner. The payments, when made by the company, were royalty expenses as to it, due to petitioner for the use of the patent and the trade-mark and the incidental right to the services of Hanskat in an advisory capacity, and they were deductible by the company as royalties paid.

The Commissioner has allowed the deduction to the company and we have no reason to assume that the deduction was not proper. The royalties under the contract were, as we have already said, payable to petitioner for the rights granted by him to the company under the contract of November 9, 1983. If such royalties had been paid to him direct they certainly would have been taxable to him as royalties received. They were not so paid to him because he was indebted to Hanskat under his contract of October 21, 1933, whereby his note for $25,000 was fully paid, the 8,762.5 shares of stock in Stayform were delivered to him, and other valuable rights were granted to him by said contract. These payments, made in 1939 by the company to Hanskat under the assignment of the contract of November 9, 1933, were payments for petitioner’s benefit and represented income to him. To what extent, if any, such payments were taxable to Rose Hanskat we express no opinion. We do not have her case before us.

Petitioner strongly contends in his brief that at least many of the payments made to Hanskat in the taxable year were made to her in payment of her services to the company in an advisory capacity. We think the evidence does support the contention that Hanskat rendered valuable services to the company in an advisory capacity and we have found that the value of these services was one-third of the total of $5,908.05 which the company constructively paid to petitioner as royalties. We have already pointed out that so far as the company was concerned this amount was paid to petitioner as royalties. However, petitioner was obligated to pay over to Hanskat a like amount and this amount was to be paid by petitioner for a twofold purpose, to wit, payment for the purchase of capital assets and payment to Hanskat for her services in an advisory capacity in the use of the patent and trade-mark. The contract so provides. The deductibility of the one-third of $5,908.05 paid to Hanskat by petitioner as remuneration for her services in an advisory capacity, we shall now discuss.

Petitioner contends in the alternative that if we should hold that the $5,908.05 in question is taxable to him as constructively received, then he is entitled to an offsetting deduction of the entire amount as an ordinary and necessary business expense. We think this contention must be sustained as to one-third of the $5,908.05 in question.

The contracts of August 19 and October 21,1933, between Hanskat and petitioner clearly covered the purchase and sale of capital assets and also the rendering of services by Hanskat in an advisory capacity to the company and to petitioner incidental to the use of the patent and trade-mark. Clearly her services in that respect were of considerable value, and we have so found. In 1939 the services which she rendered were principally to the company, yet it is also clear that it was because she was under contract with petitioner to do so, and he was compensated for it in the $5,908.05 royalties which he received under his contract of November 9, 1933. When, constructively, he passed this on to Hanskat, two-thirds of it was in part payment of capital assets and one-third in payment of services which Hanskat had rendered in an advisory capacity. This latter one-third is deductible by petitioner either as a business expense or as a nonbusiness expense incurred by him in the production of income. We so hold. The remaining two-thirds is not deductible as a business expense because it represents a capital expenditure.

Petitioner contends in the last place that if the Court should hold that he did constructively receive the income in question and is taxable upon it and is not entitled to an offsetting deduction of a like amount as a business expense, then he is entitled to deduct an amount equivalent to the amount received as depreciation of a capital asset acquired under his contract with Hanskat. In support of this contention petitioner cites Associated Patentees, Inc., 4 T. C. 979. We think the instant case is clearly distinguishable from that case. In that case the taxpayer was the owner of several patents which it had acquired from four individuals under a contract obligating the taxpayer to pay them each year 80 percent of its income from licenses granted to others to use the patents. Under the contract the taxpayer paid to the four individuals the sum of $49,209.76 in the taxable year. We held that the expenditure of $49,209.76 by the taxpayer under the contract was a capital expenditure, that the taxpayer was entitled to recover by depreciation its total cost of the patents over the life thereof, and that, since such cost was not determinable until the close of the term when all of the value of the patents would pass and since the yearly payments were attributable to income of the year in which made, the “reasonable allowance” for depreciation provided by section 23 (1) of the Internal Revenue Code required the allowance of a deduction in each year equivalent to the payment made in that year.

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Related

Willhoit v. Commissioner
1958 T.C. Memo. 207 (U.S. Tax Court, 1958)
Fouche v. Comm'r
6 T.C. 462 (U.S. Tax Court, 1946)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
6 T.C. 462, 1946 U.S. Tax Ct. LEXIS 265, 68 U.S.P.Q. (BNA) 420, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/fouche-v-commr-tax-1946.