Noble Motor Co. v. United States

231 F. Supp. 702, 14 A.F.T.R.2d (RIA) 5490, 1964 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8507
CourtDistrict Court, D. Maryland
DecidedJuly 22, 1964
DocketCiv. No. 14304
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 231 F. Supp. 702 (Noble Motor Co. v. United States) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. Maryland primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Noble Motor Co. v. United States, 231 F. Supp. 702, 14 A.F.T.R.2d (RIA) 5490, 1964 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8507 (D. Md. 1964).

Opinion

WINTER, District Judge.

Whether plaintiff, The Noble Motor Company (Taxpayer), has qualified to obtain the special tax treatment granted by the Dealer Reserve Income Adjustment Act of 1960, P.L. 86-459, 74 Stat. 124, is the question to be decided. It arises because Taxpayer, claiming the benefits of that Act, has sued to recover a tax refund1 in the amount of $4,842.-63,2 plus interest, for taxes paid in the calendar year 1953. Although the defendant vigorously contests Taxpayer’s right to any refund, the facts are all stipulated. Specific detailed findings of fact are unnecessary and only general, operative facts will be stated.

Taxpayer, a Maryland corporation, was and is engaged in the business of selling and servicing new and used automobiles and farm machinery in Easton, Maryland. It has been so engaged since its organization in 1947. Not all sales of automobiles were made for immediate cash payment. For those sold on a deferred payment plan, Taxpayer would take promissory notes, and, pursuant to its agreement with a finance company, would sell the notes, with recourse, to the finance company, at a discount. Such agreement permitted the finance company to retain 3% of the discounted price, the amount of the retention being credited by Taxpayer to an account termed, “Reserve for Finance Company Commissions.” This account is sometimes called the dealer’s reserve account. The purpose of this reserve was to enable the finance company to reimburse itself, as it had a right to do under the with recourse endorsement, should the purchaser of an automobile default in any payment due under his note. As purchasers of automobiles made final payments on their notes, Taxpayer was entitled to receive from the finance company the amount which had been retained, i. e., 3% of the discounted price of the notes. In fact, payments were not immediately made, so that on December 31 of each of the years 1952 through 1958, the actual reserve exceeded the amount of the required reserve.3

[704]*704For each of the calendar years 1953 to 1959, Taxpayer filed corporation income tax returns using the accrual basis of accounting. Prior to 1959, Taxpayer accrued on its books payments due it from the finance company stemming from the operation of the reserve account in the amounts set forth in footnote 3, under the “Reported Reserve” column, but did not treat or report them as income until actually received in cash.

In 1957 defendant examined Taxpayer’s books and its 1953 return and asserted a deficiency, on the ground that Taxpayer should have included the entire balance in the reported reserve account, amounting to $7,236.39, in its income for that calendar year. The deficiency asserted amounted to $5,890.564 Taxpayer paid this amount and, undoubtedly heartened by the decision in Johnson v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 233 F.2d 952 (4 Cir. 1956), promptly filed a claim for partial refund. 5 It should be noted, however, that' Taxpayer sought only a partial refund. It conceded that it should not have excluded from income for 1953 the entire sum of $7,236.39, but rather only the sum of $4,089.17, which represented 3% of the outstanding retentions. The difference between these two figures, plus an additional claimed reduction in the reported reserve account from $7,236.39 to $6,341.90, resulted in Taxpayer’s claim that it was entitled to a refund amounting to $4,086.61 plus $756.02 refund of interest. Significant, also, was Taxpayer’s claim that $7,236.39 did not represent the correct balance in the reserve account, but, rather, that $6,341.90 was the correct figure, because Taxpayer owed the finance company $755.09 under other provisions of their agreement.

Because defendant did not acquiesce in Johnson v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, supra, Taxpayer’s claim for a refund was denied. Taxpayer then filed suit in this Court (Noble Motor Company v. United States of America, Civil Action No. 10211) for recovery of $4,-086.61 in taxes, plus $756.02 in interest, a total of $4,842.63, with interest to the date of repayment. While the suit was pending, the Supreme Court of the United States decided Commissioner of Internal Revenue v. Hansen, 360 U.S. 446, 79 S.Ct. 1270, 3 L.Ed.2d 1360 (1959). That case held that two automobile dealer taxpayers, and one house trailer dealer taxpayer, filing income tax returns on an accrual basis, accrued income in the year of their sales of installment paper to finance companies because they acquired a fixed right to receive the percentage of the purchase money that was retained by the finance companies and credited to the reserve accounts, notwithstanding that payment thereof was by agreement withheld by the finance companies. The decision resolved a conflict among the Seventh, Eighth and Ninth Circuits.6 Although the Johnson decision in the Fourth Circuit was not specifically reviewed, the fact of the decision and its bolding were noted by the Supreme Court, 360 U.S., at p. 450, 79 S.Ct., at p. 1273, footnote 1. Needless to say, the authority of the Johnson decision was substantially eroded by the decision in Hansen. By stipulation, Civil Action No. 10211 in this Court was dismissed, with prejudice, upon payment of costs by Taxpayer.

Before Civil Action No. 10211 was dismissed, defendant, in 1960, conducted an examination of Taxpayer’s 1957 and 1958 income tax returns. As a result of the [705]*705examination, defendant, inter alia, proposed a credit adjustment of $1,310.26 to reflect a decrease to $5,926.13 on Taxpayer’s books of its reserve for finance company commissions on December 31, 1958.7 Taxpayer consented to this adjustment.

By the time the Supreme Court decided the Hansen case supra, the United States Court of Appeals for four circuits had reached the same conclusion as the United States Court of Appeals for this circuit.8 The result was that' a great number of taxpayers were required to make substantial payments of taxes for prior years in the current year, 2 Mertens, Federal Income Taxation (1961 Rev. Ed.), § 12.67a. To alleviate this hardship, Congress enacted the Dealer Reserve Income Adjustment Act of 1960, supra, which had as its effective date May 13, 1960.9

In general, the Act provided eligible taxpayers who elected to have its provisions apply with two alternatives for accounting for the adjustments to income resulting from a change to a proper method of reporting dealer reserve income, 2 Mertens, supra, § 12.67a. The one alternative would permit the Taxpayer to treat the correction of the method of reporting dealer reserve income as a required change in the method of accounting. In other words, the change in treatment of dealer reserve income would be taxed as an involuntary change in the method of accounting under § 481 of the 1954 Internal Revenue Code, 26 U.S.C.A. § 481. This was the choice offered by Section 3 of the Act. Its advantage was that if the change in accounting method were involuntary there was excluded from income in the “year of change” any part' of the adjustment which was attributable to years prior to the “year of change.”10 This alternative is the one sought to be adopted by Taxpayer.

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Bluebook (online)
231 F. Supp. 702, 14 A.F.T.R.2d (RIA) 5490, 1964 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8507, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/noble-motor-co-v-united-states-mdd-1964.