Overlakes Corp. v. Commissioner

41 T.C. 503, 1964 U.S. Tax Ct. LEXIS 161
CourtUnited States Tax Court
DecidedJanuary 16, 1964
DocketDocket No. 91875
StatusPublished
Cited by14 cases

This text of 41 T.C. 503 (Overlakes Corp. 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
Overlakes Corp. v. Commissioner, 41 T.C. 503, 1964 U.S. Tax Ct. LEXIS 161 (tax 1964).

Opinion

OPINION

Black, Judge:

Petitioner manufactured and sold Signal Corps field wire to a contracting agency of the Federal Government under two contracts, both of which were subject to price redeterminations with the contracting agency. Under the first contract, No. 8375, deliveries were made in 1951 and 1952 and proceeds were accrued in 1951 and 1952 by Overlakes. Deliveries under the second contract, No. 2704, were made in 1952 and 1953 and proceeds were also accrued by Overlakes in those years, the taxpayer being on the accrual system of accounting.

The price of wire under both contracts was later adjusted downward and the adjustments took place in 1954 with respect to contract No. 8375 and in 1955 with respect to contract No. 2704.

Overlakes refunded $475,612.17 to the contracting agency in 1954 with respect to income accrued on its books in 1951 and 1952 under contract No. 8375, simply by deducting that amount from amounts due to Overlakes by the same contracting agency on unrelated contracts. In 1955, petitioner made a refund of $312,773.85 by the same process which represented amounts accrued by Overlakes in 1952 and 1953 under contract No. 2704.

With respect to Overlakes’ tax returns for 1952 and 1953, the petitioner attempted to anticipate the refunds and it set up reserve accounts and claimed deductions. The deduction for each year was called “Provision for Kecapture of Excess Profits on Government Contracts.” Petitioner deducted $750,000 on its Schedule J “Other Deductions” in its 1952 tax return and placed this amount in a reserve account. In 1953 it deducted $50,000 in the same manner and placed this amount in the reserve account; we do not have the year 1953 before us. In the notice of deficiency for 1952, which is the only year before us, the respondent disallowed the deduction of $750,000 with the following explanation:

(c) It has been determined that the sum of $750,000.00 claimed as a deduction on line 30, page 1, of the Federal income tax return filed, and explained in Schedule J attached to the return as a “Provision for Recapture of Excess Profits on Government Contracts,” is not allowable under any provision of the Internal Revenue Code of 1939.

Issue 1

The first issue before us is whether or not petitioner is entitled to take a deduction of $750,000 as a provision for recapture of excess profits on Government contracts.

As a general rule, a liability or an expense is deductible in the taxable year in which all the events have occurred which determine the fact of the liability and the amount of the liability can be determined with reasonable accuracy.1 Where the liability is contingent and not fixed it cannot be deducted. The parties are not in disagreement with these general statements of law, Brown v. Helvering, 291 U.S. 193 (1934), and United States v. Anderson, 269 U.S. 422 (1926), which cases still represent the present law on this matter 2 as well as that under the 1939 Code, which Code is applicable to this case.

It is petitioner’s position, however, that the additions to the reserve of $750,000 in 1952 and $50,000 in 1953 were within 2 percent of the actual net amount of the renegotiation refunds and that by the end of 1952 it was definitely known that substantial excessive profits had been accrued under the contracts. In other words, petitioner contends that the liability for repayment under the contracts was not contingent in 1952 but had already become a fixed liability in that year. We cannot agree with this conclusion. There was no legally enforceable claim against petitioner for any refund in 1952 or, for that matter, in 1953. The audits necessary for a redetermination of the contract price were not completed until 1954 on contract No. 8375 and 1955 on contract No. 2704. Until there was a final determination by the contracting agency there was no claim against petitioner; the claims were still contingent.

This is not a case where petitioner was making annual additions to a reserve account based on a prior history of past experience with contingencies such as in the case of a bad debt reserve. On the contrary, we have before us a situation where petitioner was attempting to anticipate a price adjustment under a Government contract which was subject to a price redetermination under the Armed Services Procurement Act. That Act, in conjunction with the provisions in the 1939 Code as will be discussed hereinafter, provides for a specific method of relief for handling refunds under Government contracts such as we have here and we do not believe that petitioner is entitled to depart from that scheme and attempt to handle the adjustments by claiming a deduction for a reserve for the recapture of excessive profits on Government contracts.

We hold that petitioner’s accrual of a reserve of $750,000 in 1952 as a “Provision for Recapture of Excess Profits on Government Contracts” is not sustained.

Issue #

Petitioner contends, in the alternative, in the event that we determine it is not entitled to the deduction described above that section 3806 of the 1989 Code3 provides for the reduction of gross income m 1952, the year petitioner alleges the “excessive profits” 4 were earned so far as contract No. 8375 is concerned. We cannot agree with this contention since that section provides for a tax credit computation as a measure of relief and not a deduction from gross income.

Section 3806 was added to the 1939 Code in 1942 to effectuate into law the Commissioner’s Rev. Rul., I.T. 3577, 1942-2 C.B. 163. Fleet Carrier Corporation, 37 T.C. 527, 535 (1961). The immediate problems which gave rise to the enactment of section 3806 resulted from the Renegotiation Act of 1942, 56 Stat. 245, 50 U.S.C. App. 1191. However, section 3806 is also applicable to renegotiations under the Armed Services Procurement Act of 1947. The technique employed in section 3806 provides for the computation of a tax credit. No deduction is to be made in either the year the amount is actually refunded, section 3806(a) (3), or in the prior taxable year in which the amount was originally included in taxable income, section 3806 (a) (1). The tax credit is determined by computing the tax for the year of accrual with the refunded sales proceeds included in the gross income and computing the tax for such year without such refunded proceeds included in gross income. The difference between the tax as thus computed is the amount of the tax credit to be allowed. The statutory scheme embodied in section 3806 normally makes it unnecessary to open up the prior year since the tax credit is applicable to the contract refund and used as an offset against the contract refund in the year of repayment. In Standard Roofing & Material Co. v. United States, 199 F. 2d 607 (C.A. 10, 1952), this method was explained at p. 610, as follows:

The renegotiation did not operate to wipe out any taxes or interest due, nor did it alter the total tax liability. Rather, it merely operated to decrease the amount of excessive profits to be repaid the United States by the amount of taxes previously paid.

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Overlakes Corp. v. Commissioner
41 T.C. 503 (U.S. Tax Court, 1964)

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Bluebook (online)
41 T.C. 503, 1964 U.S. Tax Ct. LEXIS 161, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/overlakes-corp-v-commissioner-tax-1964.