Stein v. Commissioner

14 T.C. 494, 1950 U.S. Tax Ct. LEXIS 243
CourtUnited States Tax Court
DecidedMarch 29, 1950
DocketDocket No. 20947
StatusPublished
Cited by18 cases

This text of 14 T.C. 494 (Stein 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
Stein v. Commissioner, 14 T.C. 494, 1950 U.S. Tax Ct. LEXIS 243 (tax 1950).

Opinion

OPINION.

Turner, Judge:

The question here is whether the $25,000 in war bonds awarded to petitioner by Pabst was taxable income within the meaning of the Internal Revenue Code. By the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution, Congress was given the power to lay and collect taxes on incomes “from whatever source derived.” Thereafter the Supreme Court, in considering the scope of the power of Congress to tax as expanded by the Sixteenth Amendment, said that “income may be defined as the gain derived from capital, from labor, or from both combined.” Eisner v. Macomber, 252 U. S. 189. Congress, in the exercise of its power under the Sixteenth Amendment to lay and collect taxes on incomes and in specifying the income subject to tax, prescribed that gross income “includes gains, profits, and income derived from salaries, wages, or compensation for personal service of whatever kind and in whatever form paid, or from professions, vocations, trades, businesses, commerce, or sales, or dealings in property, whether real or personal, growing out of the ownership or use of or interest in such property; also from interest, rent, dividends, securities, or the transaction of any business carried on for gain or profit, or gains or profits and income derived from any source whatever.” Sec. 22 (a), I. E. C. And, in that connection, it bas been said that “The broad sweep of this language indicates the purpose of Congress to use the full measure of its taxing power within those definable categories.” Helvoering v. Clifford, 309 U. S. 331.

That the war bonds received by petitioner from Pabst represented gain to him from labor and therefore income within the Supreme Court’s definition of income and represented “gains, profits, and income * * * or compensation for personal service, of whatever hind and in whatever form paid, or from professions, vocations, trades, * * *” may not, it seems to us, reasonably be disputed. The petitioner had studied, worked, and trained to be an economist and he had entered into the exercise and practice of that profession. His attention was directed to an advertised offer by Pabst of awards totaling $50,000 for the 17 best plans which might be submitted on postwar employment. The prospect was alluring to petitioner and, whatever his dominant motive might have been, he decided to exercise his skill and knowledge as an economist and to devise, work out, and offer such a plan and enter in the competition. In such work and exercise of his professional knowledge and skill he devoted approximately 80 hours of his time, a period of two standard work weeks. He completed and submitted his plan and in return therefor he received the top award, war bonds of a cash value of $25,000. That the petitioner was not a regular employee or an employee at all of Pabst and the endeavor was in the form of a competition where the entries ran into the thousands and his chances of being one of 17 to whom awards were given were quite remote, in no way changes the nature and character of the award when received from gain, compensation, or income from labor or the exercise of his professional training and skill to something else. It would be as reasonable to conclude that the award to the winning architect in a competition for design for a building or to an engineer in a competition for the winning design for a bridge would not be income to them because there would be a very good possibility that they would not be winners and that, except for the benefits derived as experience from working at their profession, they would receive no return for work and labor expended. '

It is argued further, however, that the award was a gift from Pabst to petitioner and that, since gifts are specifically excluded from income by section 22 (b) (3) ,1 the award in this instance was not incopie within the statute as enacted. In this connection most of what waa offefed in the course of the argument on the point above was likewise stressed, and great reliance was placed on the conclusion reached by the Court of Appeals in McDermott v. Commissioner, 150 Fed. (2d) 585. It is pointed out, for instance, that Pabst was in the business of brewing and selling beer and not in the business of working out economic problems such as that which provided the subject for the papers submitted. It is said that the petitioner had no thought or idea of selling anything, either the paper or his services to Pabst. There is the suggestion that possibly the dominating motive was the anticipation of the pleasure and satisfaction of working out some thesis on an intriguing economic problem. There is also a suggestion that the purpose of the competition and the objective sought to be accomplished was in the public interest and for that reason there should be no thought or suggestion of either the money as used by Pabst or the bonds as received by petitioner being subject to a Federal tax; that really and truly the thought and endeavor here was in the field of education and that Congress did not intend to burden such funds with a tax. Some of the statements or thoughts appearing in the Court’s opinion in McDermott v. Commissioner, supra, do seem to give color and support to the theories advanced in the petitioner’s behalf. With all due respect to the court in that case, we find ourselves unable to follow it to its conclusion that the scope and meaning of income as it appears in the Sixteenth Amendment and in the Congressional enactment is so restricted, but, even if we are wrong in presuming so to conclude, the McDermott case is rather plainly distinguishable from the instant case when certain of the thoughts and pronouncements of the court there are applied to the facts here.

In the first place the court in the McDermott case seemed to have been greatly influenced by the fact that the work done there was in the field of learning and education and that that fact, for some reason, made a difference in the case of an award or compensation received by someone laboring to produce a treatise or discourse on a given subject. The suggestion was also made that Congress had very plainly intended to exempt educational and charitable gifts and to conclude that the recipient of an award or prize for labor and effort along that line would be subject to tax thereon would in some way defeat the will of Congress. In that connection reference was made to section 101 (6) of the Internal Revenue Code. Turning to the code, it is interesting to note, however, that Congress exempted in the religious, charitable, scientific and educational fields only corporations, community chests funds, or foundations. At no place is there any provisions exempting individuals, but, to the contrary, it is plainly shown that where the funds, gifts or donations inure to the benefit of a private shareholder or an individual the exemption does not apply. Any suggestion or thought that the mere fact that the money received by the ultimate recipient was supplied by way of gift or donation is alone sufficient to indicate or supply a basis for holding that as to the recipient the amount received was not income is, in our judgment, clearly outside the statute. One person may, for instance, by way of gift supply the money to pay some needy person for mowing the grass in his friend’s yard, but no one would suggest that the money received by the mower of the-grass was not to him income.

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Stein v. Commissioner
14 T.C. 494 (U.S. Tax Court, 1950)

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Bluebook (online)
14 T.C. 494, 1950 U.S. Tax Ct. LEXIS 243, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/stein-v-commissioner-tax-1950.