Stahl v. Commissioner

442 F.2d 324
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
DecidedApril 9, 1971
DocketNos. 18240, 18241, 18398 and 18399
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 442 F.2d 324 (Stahl v. Commissioner) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Stahl v. Commissioner, 442 F.2d 324 (7th Cir. 1971).

Opinion

SWYGERT, Chief Judge.

These consolidated cases are appeals and cross-appeals from decisions of the Tax Court1 and the District Court for the Northern District of Illinois 2 which [326]*326essentially relate to the federal income tax consequences of the same transaction. The issues raised are whether payments received by a taxpayer in retirement of notes issued to him by his wholly-owned corporation should be accorded capital gain treatment where the notes were issued in payment for the sale to the corporation by the taxpayer of (1) patents, (2) patent applications, as to which notices of allowance or indications of allowability had been received by the taxpayer prior to the sale and which matured into patents in the hands of the corporation subsequent to the transfer, and (3) patent applications as to which no indication of allowability had been received by the taxpayer prior to the sale. The Tax Court and the district court both held that such payments attributable to the sale of patents were not entitled to capital gain treatment but that those attributable to patent applications, without regard to indications of allowability received prior to sale, were entitled to capital gain treatment. We affirm the decisions of the lower courts as to the proper income tax treatment of those payments deriving from the sale of patents and patent applications which were not the subject of indications of al-lowability prior to sale, but we reverse the determination of both courts as to the proper treatment of payments deriving from the sale of potent applications as to which indications of allowability had been received prior to sale.

The factual context out of which these disputes arose is fully reported in the opinion of the Tax Court3 and the following constitutes only so much a summary of the facts as is necessary to understand our disposition of the issues raised on these appeals. Taxpayers, the late William F. Stahl and Marion B. Stahl, were husband and wife and filed

joint individual income tax returns for calendar years 1956 through 1963. During all of the years pertinent herein, William F. Stahl owned all of the issued and outstanding stock of Precision Paper Tube Company (hereinafter referred to as “Precision”), an Illinois corporation. On January 3, 1956, Mr. Stahl entered into an agreement with Precision whereby he sold to the corporation all his interest in eight United ed States Patents and five patent applications, receiving therefor corporate notes of Precision in the principal amount of $300,000.00 allocated by the terms of the agreement of sale as follows:

Mr. Stahl received fifteen promissory notes of Precision each in the principal amount of $20,000.00, maturing serially at one each year for fifteen years beginning January 3, 1957. The notes were apparently facially negotiable but provided for no interest to the holder until after their respective due dates, [327]*327from which dates five percent interest was to be payable. In fact, however, no interest was ever paid on delinquent notes.

Precision was unable to make any payments on the notes prior to 1959, but during the period 1959 through 1963, the following amounts were received by Mr. Stahl in partial payment on the notes:

Year Amount Received

1959 $ 8,971.49

1960 25,542.59

1961 29,826.30

1962 31,860.06

1963 51,075.27

Taxpayers did not report the transaction with Precision in their joint return for calendar year 1956. The amounts listed above were reported in taxpayers’ joint returns for calendar years 1959 through 1963 as long-term capital gains from the sale of patents. After several audits of taxpayers’ returns for 1959 through 1963 had been conducted by revenue agents with no change being made with respect to the tax treatment of the above amounts, in 1964 a revenue agent reaudited those years and asserted deficiencies deriving from the erroneous reporting of the receipts in partial payment of Precision’s notes. The agent’s report stated, “Principal cause of change is treatment of collection on notes, which is deemed to be ordinary income, not as [sic] gain from sale of assets held more than six months.” These proceedings followed the inability of the parties to agree on the proper treatment of those receipts.

It is undisputed that the patents and patent applications were capital assets in the hands of Mr. Stahl. Nor is it disputed that, prior to the time of the sale to Precision, Mr. Stahl had received a formal “Notice of Allowance” from the patent office with regard to each of patent applications nos. 274,761 and 274,-762 and had received notification from the patent office that as to patent application no. 361,229 two of its claims “appear[ed] allowable.” Moreover, each of the foregoing applications as to which indications of allowability had been received prior to sale subsequently matured into patents in the hands of Precision and were thereafter depreciated. The other two applications had been rejected at the time of the sale, although no. 450,931 ultimately matured into patent no. 2,946,096 on July 26, 1960 after a successful appeal to the Board of Patent Appeals by Precision and subsequent to a notice of allowance issued on December 23, 1959 pursuant to the Board’s decision.

Taxpayers contend that section 1232(a) (1) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 controls the federal income tax consequences of the receipt of payments in partial repayment of the notes received on the sale of the patents.4 However, as the Tax Court concluded, section 1232 has no application to these facts.5 The Tax Court observed that it could not have been the intent of Congress to apply section 1232 to corporate notes such as those here involved, stating:

[T]o. accept [taxpayer’s] theory would mean that, through the simple expedient of accepting notes in lieu of cash, a taxpayer could always insure the receipt of capital gain from the sale of property. * * * Surely Congress never intended such a bizarre result.6

We agree. Ordinarily, the sale of what would otherwise be a capital asset to a [328]*328related taxpayer results in ordinary income treatment of any gain realized thereby.7 The legislative history of section 1232 reveals no intent of Congress to provide a taxpayer with the windfall of capital gain treatment of such transactions merely because the taxpayer receives corporate notes, rather than cash or other property, from the related purchaser.8

The lower courts determined that the federal income tax effects of the 1956 sale of patents are determined by reference to section 1239 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954.9 This determination is indisputably correct as is obvious both from the clear language of the statute and from the legislative intent.10 However, the lower courts applied the ordinary income treatment established by section 1239 only to those payments deriving from the sale of patents, holding that patent applications are not “property which in the hands of the transferee is property of a character which is subject to the allowance for depreciation provided in section 167” as stated in section 1239(b).11

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442 F.2d 324, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/stahl-v-commissioner-ca7-1971.