Case ID: bta_1/html/1061-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Appeal of JOHN McCORMICK, SR.
    Docket No. 1880.
    Submitted April 7, 1925;
    decided April 27,1925.
    
      Frederick E. Reeve, C. P. A., for the taxpayer.
    
      A. Calder Machay, Esq., for the Commissioner.
    Before James, Littleton, and Tetjssell.
    This is an appeal from the determination of a deficiency in income tax for the year 1919 in the sum of $1,577.23.
    FINDINGS OE FACT.
    The taxpayer is an individual residing in Brooklyn, N. Y.
    During the year 1919, the taxpayer sold for $32,750 two parcels of improved real estate purchased by him in 1883 for $50,700, of which $8,500 was allocable to land value and $42,200 to buildings. The assessed valuation of the said land and buildings on March 1, 1913, was $45,000.
    
      During the year 1917, a certain orange grove owned by the taxpayer somewhere in the State of Florida is alleged to have been damaged through some cause not disclosed, but alleged damage was claimed by the taxpayer to have retarded the growth of the trees in the said grove for five years. In the audit of the taxpayer’s return for the year 1917, the Commissioner allowed a loss on account of this damage in the sum of $5,075, and one-fifth of the said sum the Commissioner is now asserting as an addition to income for the year 1919.
   DECISION.

The deficiency determined by the Commissioner is allowed in part and disallowed in part. There is no evidence before the Board upon which it can determine whether a loss was sustained in connection with the sale of the real estate by the taxpayer in the year 1919, and so much of the Commissioner’s determination as depends upon the disallowance of the said loss in the computation of the taxpayer’s net income is affirmed. The growth of the taxpayer’s orange trees is obviously not income, and the addition to his income upon this account by the Commissioner is disallowed. Final determination of the deficiency will be settled on consent or on fifteen days’ notice, in accordance with Bule 50.