Trustees System Co. v. United States

30 F. Supp. 361, 24 A.F.T.R. (P-H) 159, 1939 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 2032
CourtDistrict Court, W.D. Kentucky
DecidedSeptember 23, 1939
DocketIn Bankruptcy Nos. 2094, 10866
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 30 F. Supp. 361 (Trustees System Co. v. United States) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, W.D. Kentucky primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Trustees System Co. v. United States, 30 F. Supp. 361, 24 A.F.T.R. (P-H) 159, 1939 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 2032 (W.D. Ky. 1939).

Opinion

HAMILTON, District Judge.

In the above-styled actions, the debtor-plaintiff seeks to recover income taxes alleged to have been overpaid for the calendar years 1930 and 1931 and resists the payment of an additional assessment for the calendar year 1932.

The Trustees System Company of Louisville, debtor in action No. 10866 and plaintiff in No. 2094, with its principal place of business at Louisville, Kentucky, was a wholly-owned subsidiary of. the ’Trustees System Service ■ Corporation, a Virginia corporation, with its principal place of business in. Chicago, Illinois, which was a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Industrial Loan & Guaranty Company, an Alabama corporation, which owned all the capital stock of the Trustees1 System Extension Corporation, created under the laws of Illinois, with its principal place of business at Chicago.

The Trustees System Service Corporation was engaged in the industrial or small loan business in various cities of the United States through thirty-three wholly-owned subsidiaries of which the debtor-plaintiff was one.

It sold to the public, through the Trustees System Extension Corporation, guaranteed dividend preferred stock and six percent “gold notes” of its subsidiaries and executed its notes to them for the net proceeds of the sales and made advances without charge to each for their loans to customers and the subsidiaries remitted to the parent their collections out of which it paid dividends on the preferred stock and interest on “gold notes” of the subsidiaries.

The parent company kept in its Chicago office its books of account on an accrual basis, and, those of its subsidiaries reflecting therein all inter-companjes and outside transactions. The subsidiaries kept no books at their respective places of business except loan and collection sheets and the officers and directors of the parent and subsidiaries were inter-locking. The business was car-, ried on without financial difficulties until October 1932 when the parent company, was placed in equity receivership in the United States District Court- for the Northern District of Illinois at Chicago, Illinois, and the debtor-plaintiff was placed in equity receivership in this Court on June 19, 1933. It later’.entered bankruptcy under 77B of the Bankruptcy Act, 11 U.S.C.A. ■'§ 207 from which it has emerged a going concern.

The parent company had on its books an account, designated “rent and service”, to which was credited monthly to the debtor-plaintiff, sums equal to its actual Louisville office expenses .including advertising and the salary of its manager, and also $250, which was estimated to be the fair monthly rental value of debtor-plaintiff’s offices at 415 W. Market Street, Louisville, Kentucky, and other items unidentified except “additional rent and service.”

This account was continued through the years 1930, 1931 and 1932 up to October. Countervailing entries were on the books of the debtor-plaintiff which it closed at the end of each- year into profit and loss, but the parent company deferred its accounts. One [363]*363of the bookkeepers in charge of the books of both parent and debtor-plaintiff prepared a temporary trial balance of the debtor-plaintiff at the end of each month and delivered it to the general bookkeeper of both, who in turn delivered it to the general auditor and comptroller of both, who noted on it in pencil the charges and credits to be made on account of rent and service. From these notations, permanent journal entries were made of the credit and debit items and entered on the respective ledgers of the companies.

During the calendar year 1930 the debtor-plaintiff, out of its rent and service accounts, charged to profit and loss $78,411.21 for the calendar year 1931, $74,891.16, and for nine months of the calendar year 1932, $55,796.21. In its tax returns for the calendar years 1930 and 1931, it included in taxable income'the above sums but the receiver omitted them for the calendar year 1932. He timely filed claims for refunds for the years 1930 and 1931 and revised the corporation’s returns by eliminating rent and service credits and claimed additional deductions of $37,901.14 for the year 1930 and $19,512.97 for the year 1931.

On audit and review, the Commissioner of Internal Revenue revised the receiver’s return for the calendar year 1932 and included therein $55,796.21 rent and service as income, after which the receiver filed an. amended return and claimed additional deductions of $21,036.64.

The plaintiff seeks to recover in .action No. 2094 $8,102.19 alleged to have been overpaid in taxes and interest for thé calendar year 1930 and $10,181.09 for the calendar year 1931.

In No. 10866, pursuant' tor the assessment of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, the Collector of Internal Revenue for the District of Kentucky has filed a claim for additional taxes of $10,014.10. The burden rests on the debtor-plaintiff to establish by a fair preponderance of the' evidence that the taxes which it seeks to recover and avoid are invalid.

This rule follows because the debt- or-plaintiff must overcome two presump-, tions: first, that its books were cautiously kept and entries made with forethought and after a consideration of all the facts and that the statements therein are admissions against it; second, that taxes paid are1 lawfully collected upon assessments by the Commissioner of Internal Revenue and- are' due on a claim filed by the Collector of Internal Revenue pursuant to assessment theretofore made by the Commissioner. United States v. Rindskopf, 105 U.S. 418, 26 L.Ed. 1131; United States v. Anderson, 269 U.S. 422, 46 S.Ct. 131, 70 L.Ed. 347; Niles Bement Pond Company v. United States, 281 U.S. 357, 50 S.Ct. 251, 74 L.Ed. 901; Botany Worsted Mills v. United States, 278 U.S. 282, 49 S.Ct. 129, 73 L.Ed. 379.

Presumptions operate only to relieve the party in whose favor they work from going forward in evidence and the weight of evidence necessary to overcome them varies in relation to the weight of the evidential facts bringing them into existence. Thus, the presumption of the correctness of entries' in books depends on the underlying facts producing them and likewise the presumption of the correctness of the determination of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue depends on the weight of the facts on which he made his assessment. Bernheim Distilling Company v. Mayes, D.C., 268 F. 629. An examination of the record shows that the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, in making his assessments, acted solely on information furnished by the debtor-plaintiff from its books. It therefore follows that, unless the real facts show; it received the income taxed the presumptions fail and it is entitled to relief for there are no contrary proofs in the record. Lunsford v. Commissioner, 6 Cir., 62 F.2d 740, 741.

Income cannot be determined by bookkeeping unless the facts underlying the entries show it was income as defined in the Statute. Doyle v. Mitchell Bros. Co., 247 U.S. 179, 38 S.Ct. 467, 62 L.Ed.

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30 F. Supp. 361, 24 A.F.T.R. (P-H) 159, 1939 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 2032, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/trustees-system-co-v-united-states-kywd-1939.