Henderson Clay Products v. United States

252 F. Supp. 1013, 17 A.F.T.R.2d (RIA) 630, 1966 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 9961
CourtDistrict Court, E.D. Texas
DecidedMarch 11, 1966
DocketCiv. No. 3080
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 252 F. Supp. 1013 (Henderson Clay Products v. United States) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, E.D. Texas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Henderson Clay Products v. United States, 252 F. Supp. 1013, 17 A.F.T.R.2d (RIA) 630, 1966 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 9961 (E.D. Tex. 1966).

Opinion

SHEEHY, Chief Judge.

This is an action in which the Plaintiff seeks to recover income taxes which he alleges and contends the Internal Revenue Service wrongfully assessed against and collected from it for its fiscal year 1955. Most of the pertinent facts were stipulated by the parties. The facts as stipulated and as found by the Court are as hereinafter stated.

Plaintiff is a Texas corporation with its principal office in Henderson, Texas. It owns clay pits and deposits located near Henderson and is engaged in the business of mining the clay from said pits and deposits and processing such clay into brick, which it sells throughout the United States. It keeps its books on the basis of a fiscal year ending March 31 and uses the accrual system of accounting. The fiscal year involved in this action is the fiscal year that ended March 31, 1955, which year hereinafter will be referred to as 1955. The principal question presented in this case relates to the depletion allowance the Plaintiff, as an integrated-miner manufacturer, is entitled to take on its clay that it mined and manufactured into brick in 1955.

This is the second action that the Plaintiff has brought in this Court for income tax refund wherein the question involved relates to the depletion allowance it was entitled to take on the clay it mined and manufactured into brick. The other case, hereinafter referred to as the prior case, was Civil Action No. 2463 on the docket of this Court and involved the years 1951-54. As reflected by the Opinion of the Court filed as the Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law in that cause (Henderson Clay Products v. United States, D.C., 199 F.Supp. 304), this Court found and concluded that the first commercially marketable product obtained by Plaintiff in the mining of its ball clay was shredded ball clay which had a value of $10.50 per ton during the years involved in that case, and that Plaintiff’s depletion base for income tax purposes [1014]*1014for those years was the product of the number of tons of ball clay mined and processed by Plaintiff during a tax year times the value per ton ($10.50) of said shredded ball clay. The Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed the judgment of this Court in that case and, in so doing, held that the Plaintiff, in determining the depletion base on its ball clay it mined and used in the manufacturing of brick, must use the proportionate profits method provided for by Treasury Regulation 118, Sec. 39.23(m)-l(3). See United States v. Henderson Clay Products, 324 F.2d 7, Certiorari denied, 377 U.S. 917, 84 S.Ct. 1182, 12 L.Ed.2d 186.

Plaintiff’s pits and deposits, as mined in 1955, contained both ball clay and brick and tile clay. Plaintiff sold no raw clay; it processed all of the clay it mined into brick. During the fiscal year 1955 Plaintiff mined 8,850 tons of brick and tile clay which was sold in the form of brick for the sum of $109,614.72. Such brick and tile clay was used as an additive, principally for coloring purposes. In the same year Plaintiff mined and sold in the form of brick 50,151.8 tons of ball clay for the aggregate sum of $621,150.09 — an average of approximately $12.38 per ton.

Plaintiff’s operations of its clay pits and deposits in the year 1955 were substantially the same as in prior and later years, i. e., it used the stripping method. The clay was exposed by removal of the overburden and was removed by the use of a dragline and loaded into trucks which transported the clay approximately four miles to Plaintiff’s plant. As removed from the pit or mine by the dragline, the clay was in large balls or lumps weighing up to 200 pounds. Upon reaching Plaintiff’s plant, the clay was run through a shredder and shredded or disintegrated down to a small manageable size — about the size of a walnut. The clay was then moved to Plaintiff’s pug mill or stored for later use in the pug mill. In the pug mill certain blending, grinding and screening was done to reduce the clay to a finer size. Water was added and the clay was formed into the shape of brick. From the pug mill the clay in the shape of brick went to dryers for extraction of the moisture and from there to kilns for burning into brick. The clay came out of the kilns in the form of finished brick and was either loaded for shipment and sale or stored for later shipment and sale.

Approximately 90% of the ball clay mined in the United States is mined in the Kentucky-Tennessee area. During the 1950’s there were a number of persons and firms located in that area engaged as non-integrated miners in the mining and selling of ball clay. They,' like the Plaintiff, used the strip mining method. They first removed the overburden and then removed the ball clay in large balls or lumps by a dragline or similar machinery and loaded it into trucks and transported same to the operator’s plant. It was there run through a shredder and shredded or disintegrated to a small, manageable size —about the size of a walnut. Such clay at that point is commonly referred to as shredded ball clay. Some of the shredded ball clay was then shipped or stored for shipment, but about half of such ball clay was further reduced to a pulverized or powder size, generally referred to as air floated ball clay. In 1955 such Kentucky-Tennessee miners sold in excess of 400,000 tons of shredded and air floated ball clay all over the United States, including Texas and the Southwest. During the 1950’s there was a market for shredded ball clay and air floated ball clay all over the United States, including Texas and the Southwest, and the average market price or value of shredded ball clay during such years and in 1955 was $10.00 per ton. The price of $10.00 per ton was the typical prevailing maket price for average shredded ball clay at the mine operator’s plant, which the Kentucky-Tennessee miners received in such years for the shredded ball clay that they sold.

During the fiscal year 1955 there was a market for the shredded ball clay that Plaintiff produced and had Plaintiff chosen to sell its ball clay in the shredded form during that year it would have received an average of $10.00 per ton for said shredded ball clay.

[1015]*1015At no place was ball clay sold in the raw state as it came from the pit or mine or at any point prior to the shredded stage. Such shredded ball clay was the first commercially marketable mineral product from the mining of ball clay.

The processes applied by the Plaintiff up to the transfer of its clay to the pug mill, as above described, were substantially the same as the processes applied by the Kentucky-Tennessee ball clay miners to produce shredded ball clay and were the ordinary treatment processes normally applied by owners and operators of ball clay mines to obtain the commercially marketable mineral product of shredded ball clay. Plaintiff’s ball clay at such pre-pug mill stage was of a like kind and grade, i. e., it was average shredded ball clay and was the first commercially marketable mineral product of Plaintiff’s ball clay operations. At that point Plaintiff’s ball clay first became suitable for industrial use or consumption.

Plaintiff duly filed its income tax return for fiscal year 1955. In such return it deducted, as percentage depletion, from gross income to arrive at taxable income, 15% of the sales price of its brick, subject to the 50% of net income limitation.

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Related

Henderson Clay Products, Inc. v. United States
633 F.2d 565 (Court of Claims, 1980)
Henderson Clay Products, Inc.
215 Ct. Cl. 1000 (Court of Claims, 1978)
Gray Knox Marble Co. v. United States
257 F. Supp. 632 (E.D. Tennessee, 1966)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
252 F. Supp. 1013, 17 A.F.T.R.2d (RIA) 630, 1966 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 9961, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/henderson-clay-products-v-united-states-txed-1966.