Ross v. United States

148 F. Supp. 330, 50 A.F.T.R. (P-H) 1536, 1957 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 4023
CourtDistrict Court, D. Massachusetts
DecidedJanuary 31, 1957
DocketCiv. A. 56-11
StatusPublished
Cited by10 cases

This text of 148 F. Supp. 330 (Ross v. United States) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. Massachusetts primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Ross v. United States, 148 F. Supp. 330, 50 A.F.T.R. (P-H) 1536, 1957 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 4023 (D. Mass. 1957).

Opinion

FORD, District Judge.

Plaintiff brings this action to recover an alleged overpayment of income taxes for the year 1944, resulting from the payment of a deficiency assessed by the Commissioner on the ground that the short-term capital gain from the sale of certain real estate was properly includable in taxpayer’s gross income for that year.

During 1944 plaintiff was serving in the armed forces in Europe. He had given his father, Frank Ross, a power of attorney and control of his bank account. In May of 1944 the father purchased a one-third interest in certain real estate for the sum of $2,666.66. Of this amount $416.66 was taken from the son’s bank account and the rest supplied from the father’s own funds. Legal title was taken in the father’s name. The property was sold in August 1944 at a profit. The father received one third of the sale price from which he recouped his own advances, placing the balance in the son’s account. On his return from Europe in 1945 the son acquiesced in what his father had done, and reported the profit on the transaction in his income tax return for 1944.

The Commissioner determined that the profit in question was not the son's but the father’s. On November 5, 1948, the Commissioner determined that there had been an over-assessment of $2,795.89 on the son’s 1944 tax return due to his inclusion of the gain on the real estate-transaction. After adjustments on certain other items, a net refund of $415.-82 was paid to the son. The son had made no claim for this refund, nor did he sign the Form 873 “Acceptance of Proposed Over-assessment” sent to him in 1948 by the Treasury Department.

Meanwhile the Commissioner assessed a deficiency against the father on the ground that the gain in question should have been included in the father’s gross income. The father paid the assessment and brought suit to recover. Judgment in this action was in favor of the father. Ross v. United States, D.C., 122 F.Supp. 642. The Court held that in the real estate transaction the father acted as agent for the son, that the funds advanced by the father were intended as a loan, that under Massachusetts law the transaction created a resulting trust in favor of the son, and that the profit on the transaction was income taxable to the son and only to him. The appeal taken in the case was dismissed by the United. States on November 12, 1954.

Thereafter in 1955 the Commissioner made a further assessment against the son, based on the inclusion of the gain *332 ón the real estate transaction in his 1944 income. The son, plaintiff here, paid this assessment in the amount of $3,-036.33 and later paid interest thereon in the amount of $1,865.56. Claim for refund was duly made, no action was taken thereon within six -months, and plaintiff now sues to recover these payments.

The period within which under the statute of limitations an assessment against plaintiff on his 1944 income tax could be made, as extended by waiver signed by plaintiff, expired on June 30, 1950. Plaintiff makes no contention that the gain in question should not have been included in his 1944 income, as he originally reported it, but objects to the 1955 assessment solely on the ground that it was barred by the statute of limitations. The government’s contention is that this is a situation in which under the provisions of 26 U.S.C.A. § 3801(b) the assessment is not barred by the statute of limitations.

In order for § 3801(b) to be applicable here, the Rosses, father and son, must be related taxpayers, i. e. during the pertinent taxable year 1944, they must have stood in one of the relationships enumerated in 26 U.S.C.A. § 3801 (a) (3). The United States claims the existence of one of these relationships, that of fiduciary and beneficiary. As was found by Judge Wyzanski in the father’s action, Ross v. United States, supra, when the father took title in his own name in 1944 to an interest in land paid for with the son’s money, a resulting trust arose under Massachusetts law. Gerace v. Gerace, 301 Mass. 14, 16 N.E. 2d 6, 117 A.L.R. 1459. Plaintiff contends that the term “resulting trust” describes a situation which involves no true fiduciary relationship between the parties. It is true that a resulting trust differs from an express trust in the manner in which it arises, since the latter springs from an affirmative intention manifested by the settlor to create a trust, while the former is implied by law from circumstances indicating the absence of an intention to give the beneficial interest to the person in whom legal title to the property is vested. Scott on Trusts (Second Edition, 1956) § 404.1. Moreover, the trustee of a resulting trust may ordinarily have only the duty of conveying the property to the beneficiary. Nevertheless, a true trust arises. “A resulting trust, however, involves a fiduciary relation between the trustee and the beneficiary, although the relation may not be as intense as in the case of an express trust.” Scott on Trusts, § 409. “The trustee of a resulting trust, like the trustee of an express trust, is in a fiduciary relation to the beneficiary.” Restatement of Trusts, Chapter 12, Topic 1, Introductory Note, page 1249. Hence, in their relationship as trustee and beneficiary of a resulting trust, the father and son here stood in the relationship of fiduciary and beneficiary. This is not, of course, inconsistent with the existence of other relationships between them. Thus the father in taking the son’s money and using it to buy real estate may have been acting as an agent of his son. As to the father’s money advanced toward the purchase price, a debtor-creditor relationship may have been created. These do not preclude the existence of a trust relationship as to the real estate once it had been acquired.

So far as pertinent to the present case, § 3801(b) (3) provides:

“(b) Circumstances of adjustment. When a determination under the income tax laws—
* * ->:• * *
“(3) Requires the exclusion from gross income of an item with respect to which tax was paid and which was erroneously excluded or omitted * * * from the gross income of a related taxpayer;
•X1 •X’ -X*
and, on the date the determination becomes final, correction of the effect of the error is prevented by the operation (whether before, on, or after May 28, 1938) of any provision of the internal-revenue laws other than this section and other than section 3761 (relating to compromises), then the effect of the er *333 ror shall be corrected by an adjustment made under this section. Except in cases described in paragraphs (6) and (7), such adjustment shall be made only if there is adopted in the determination a position maintained * * * by the taxpayer with respect to whom the determination is made (in case the amount of the adjustment would be assessed and collected in the same manner as a deficiency under subsection (c) ), which position is inconsistent with the erroneous inclusion, exclusion, omission, allowance, disallowance, recognition, or nonrecognition, as the case may be.

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Bluebook (online)
148 F. Supp. 330, 50 A.F.T.R. (P-H) 1536, 1957 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 4023, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/ross-v-united-states-mad-1957.