Heil Co. v. Commissioner

38 T.C. 989, 1962 U.S. Tax Ct. LEXIS 64
CourtUnited States Tax Court
DecidedSeptember 28, 1962
DocketDocket No. 81313
StatusPublished
Cited by20 cases

This text of 38 T.C. 989 (Heil Co. 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
Heil Co. v. Commissioner, 38 T.C. 989, 1962 U.S. Tax Ct. LEXIS 64 (tax 1962).

Opinion

Withey, Judge:

The Commissioner has determined a deficiency in the income tax of petitioner for the fiscal year ended October 31,1954, in the amount of $271,269.67. The only issue here presented is whether the amount of $1 million paid it under the terms of a contract constitutes ordinary income or capital gain.

FINDINGS OF FACT.

The stipulated facts are fomid as stipulated.

The petitioner, the Heil Co., is a corporation organized under the laws of the State of Wisconsin, with its principal office at 3000 West Montana Street, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

On January 14, 1955, the petitioner filed its income tax return for the fiscal year beginning November 1, 1953, and ending October 31, 1954, with the district director of internal revenue, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

During its fiscal year ended October 31, 1954, and prior thereto and thereafter, petitioner was a manufacturer and a fabricator of heavy equipment including, among other things, gasoline and milk tanks for semitrailer trucks, truck bodies, hoists, earth-moving machín-ery, and agricultural and industrial dehydrators. The petitioner had four divisions, a body and hoist division, a tank division, a heating division, and a road machinery division.

From the early forties and until December 17, 1953, petitioner designed, produced, and was marketing a line of medium and heavy earth-moving machinery under the trade name “Heiliner.” The Heiliner was produced by petitioner’s road machinery division. Over the period from the early forties through 1953, the name “Heiliner” had developed value.

The Heiliner consisted of a two-wheel rubber-tired tractor and interchangeable two-wheel rubber-tired wagon or two-wheel rubber-tired scraper used in combination with the tractors. The Heiliner was being produced in two series known as the Series 800 and the Series 500. As of December 17, 1953, petitioner had under development, but not as yet being manufactured, two additional series of the Heiliner known as Series 400 and the Series 900.

The Heiliner was usually sold as a unit, that is, either a tractor in combination with a wagon or in combination with a scraper. The tractor could not have been used alone without either a scraper or a wagon. Ho other wagon or scraper was manufactured by any company other than petitioner that could fit the Heiliner tractor and be used with it.

The petitioner held 14 basic patents on the tractor unit: 7 American, 3 Canadian, 2 Australian, and 2 Mexican. These patents are listed below with their patent number, issue date, and the expiration date of the patent:

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The foreign patents covered the same items covered by the basic American patents.

The Heiliner tractor was made up of hundreds of parts. The manufacture of the tractor was primarily an assembly process by petitioner. The biggest portion of the components of the tractor were purchased from otter manufacturers, including the major parts, as opposed to being manufactured by petitioner.

The petitioner also held patents relating to the scraper and wagon components of the Heiliner. The great majority of the scraper components and wagon components were manufactured rather than purchased and assembled.

During the fiscal period ended December 31,1949, through the fiscal period ended October 31, 1960, the petitioner sold the following number of Heiliner tractor and scraper units and scrapers or wagons without tractors:

The following is a summary of petitioner’s sales as a whole, for petitioner’s road machinery division (of which Heiliner was a part), for the Heiliner, and a gross profit less selling expenses for the fiscal period December 31,1949, through the fiscal period ended October 31, 1956, for petitioner as a whole and for its road machinery division:

During tlie period prior to December 17,1953, the Heiliner tractors, scrapers, and wagons were distributed through independent distributors who also distributed other manufacturers’ products.

Prior to 1951, the rubber-tired earth-moving equipment business was in the hands of small companies, as for example, LeTourneau, Euclid, and Woolridge, and the Heil Company. Up to that time, the companies that manufactured the crawler-type tractors were not in the rubber-tired business. The crawler tractor manufacturing companies were usually larger than the companies that manufactured the rubber-tired tractors.

One principal difference between a crawler-type tractor and a rubber-tired tractor is that the rubber-tired tractor is faster and more powerful in moving materials.

Beginning in 1951 the larger crawler-type tractor manufacturers were buying up the smaller independent rubber-tired tractor manufacturers. Westinghouse-Air Brake had purchased LeTourneau, Al-lis-Chalmers had purchased LaPlante Choate, and General Motors had purchased Euclid. The crawler tractor distributors prior to 1951 had been selling the rubber-tired tractors manufactured by the independent companies. The distributors, subsequent to 1951, wished to sell their own rubber-tired line. Some of the distributors selling the Heiliner were no longer allowed to sell it.

Because of its comparatively small size and correspondingly weak distributing organization, petitioner in 1953 did not desire to continue manufacturing the Heiliner tractors and try to sell them in competition with the larger manufacturers of rubber-tired earth-moving equipment.

International Harvester Company, hereinafter referred to as Harvester, manufactured, among other things, trucks and tractors for earth moving. This equipment was manufactured in Harvester’s Industrial Power Division.

Harvester distributed its road machinery equipment through a series of independent distributors. These distributors handled other product lines in the same fields including that manufactured by the petitioner, Bucyrus-Erie, and others.

Some of Harvester’s competitors in the road machinery business in 1953 were LaPlante Choate, Caterpillar, Euclid, and LeTourneau. All of these companies were manufacturing two-wheel rubber-tired tractors. As of December 17, 1953, Harvester was neither manufacturing nor marketing two-wheel rubber-tired tractors or scrapers or wagons. Harvester did have a two-wheel rubber-tired tractor under design as of that date. To keep up with its competition, in 1953 Harvester wanted to get into the two-wheel rubber-tired business in a hurry.

In the fall of 1953, petitioner and Harvester entered into negotiations on a contract concerning the Heiliner unit. The negotiations were culminated in a contract dated December 17,1953. The contract was to last for a period of 11 years and was cancelable at the end of the fifth aniversary or the eighth anniversary of the signing of the contract.

Under the terms of the contract, “Two-Wheel Tractors” were defined as—

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Heil Co. v. Commissioner
38 T.C. 989 (U.S. Tax Court, 1962)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
38 T.C. 989, 1962 U.S. Tax Ct. LEXIS 64, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/heil-co-v-commissioner-tax-1962.