Source: http://www.losthorizons.com/Documents/WhatIsA1040Anyway.htm
Timestamp: 2017-08-16 13:03:38
Document Index: 366969401

Matched Legal Cases: ['§6051', '§3121', '§31', '§31', '§31', '§6012']

﻿ What is a "1040", anyway?
Just What IS An Annual "Form 1040" Tax Return, Anyway?
SEVERAL DIFFERENT THINGS, ACTUALLY... To start with, any tax return is a form for reporting what the filer believes to be tax-relevant events (or the revenues resulting therefrom, more accurately-- remember, the tax is on the events, but is measured by the profitable outcome of those events). Some returns-- including 1040s-- are also a means by which the filer makes certain elections related to those reported revenues, and a means by which the filer calculates and acknowledges any consequent tax liability (which could be anything from $0 on up).
A return is never simply an indiscriminate report of all economic activity or the gains therefrom-- that is, it is never a report of "all that comes in".
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/tax+return (emphasis added)
"[T]his [examination] right upon the part of the [IRS District] supervisor extends only to such books and papers as relate to their banking operations, and are connected with the internal revenue of the United States"
United States v. LaSalle Nat'l Bank, 437 US 298 (1978), quoting Stanwood v. Green, 22 F.Cas. 1077, 1079 (No. 13,301) (SD Miss. 1870) (emphasis added)
Further, of course, the law provides for listing some very particular gains as "Items specifically included in "gross income"" for purposes of "Computation of Taxable Income" under 26 U.S. Code Chapter 1, Subchapter B (and also list some things as specifically not to be included). The use in these provisions of "specifically" indicates that there are other things both appropriate to include and appropriate to exclude which are not specifically listed and therefore left to the discretion of the filer (and, of course, even in the case of something to be "specifically included", the filer is relied-upon to understand and apply the distinctions between, say, alimony subject to the tax-- due to being a portion of otherwise federally-taxable gains received by the payer of the alimony-- versus alimony which is not).
Clearly, return filers are expected to independently consider and decide the tax-relevance of any given event and the related gains, and a return such as a 1040 is not simply intended to be anyone's report of "all that comes in".
"INFORMATION RETURNS" SUCH AS W-2s or 1099s are similarly circumscribed, and are not intended to be simply reports of "all that went out to so-and-so".
Here are the specs for what payments are actually and exclusively to be reported on a W-2, for instance (codified at 26 USC §6051):
Obviously, this is not just "what got paid"...
Now look at the even-more-revealing regulatory provisions concerning "wage" reporting. For purposes of the "FICA" income taxes, the receipt of "wages" by which the tax is measured hinges on the payments being made in the course of "employment" as defined in the law at 26 USC §3121(b). In the regulations controlling the application of these provisions, we find:
26 CFR §31.3121(b)-4 Employment; excepted services in general
Similarly, the withholding provisions in Chapter 24 of the IRC (part of Subtitle C "Employment Taxes") at 3401(a), which identifies what is to be reported on a W-2 by a payer and on a 1040 by a recipient as "wages" constituting "income" on which the tax is laid are subject to these regulatory provisions:
26 CFR §31.3401(a)-2 Exclusions from wages.
26 CFR §31.3401(c)-1 Employee
Plainly, since some services performed for an employer by an employee-- however those terms are defined or distinguished-- don't constitute "employment", and some remuneration for the performance of such services doesn't qualify as "wages" required to be reported or declared and included in the calculation of taxes owed, both the payer and the recipient are expected to come to their own conclusions about whether any given payments or receipts qualify for reporting. Plainly, returns are NOT intended to be just "reports of what came in" (or "went out"), even for government entities, such as those to whom the regulations above apply.
Then, of course, there is the overall prescription at 26 USC §6012(a) that:
(A) Every individual having for the taxable year gross income which equals or exceeds the exemption amount, except that a return shall not be required of an individual— [a variety of additional exceptions follows]
Prior to seeing the provision of law we have just reviewed it might have been assumed that the only variable contemplated by this reporting requirement language concerns the aggregate amount that has "come in". But as has been shown, this is not the case. The real variable is how much (if any) of what has come in qualifies as "income" (under any of its various denominations), something to be determined by each individual considering whether or not he is subject to filing requirements, and what is to be reported on a return.
This fundamental character of the 1040 was illuminated during an exchange between Missouri Democratic Senator Bennett Clark, Connecticut Republican Senator John A. Danaher and testifying witnesses Charles O. Hardy of the Brookings Institution and Milton Friedman of the Treasury Department Division of Tax Research during a hearing on the revival of tax withholding before a subcommittee of the committee on finance, United States Senate, during the 77th Congress, Second Session on data relative to withholding provisions of the 1942 Revenue Act on August 21 and 22, 1942:
Both scenarios contemplated by the committee and its witnesses acknowledge that some earnings are not "income" to be reported as such and that the individual filer is to make the distinction and complete his 1040 in accordance with his conclusions. This is unambiguously so in the discussion of a "nontaxpayer" from whose receipts amounts are withheld, and only a little less so in the case of an individual from whose earnings amounts have been withheld but who concludes that he has not received [enough] "income" for any tax to be due and is expected therefore to produce a 1040 claiming a refund of the withheld amounts.
Plainly, returns are NOT intended to be just "reports of what came in" (or "went out"), for anyone, anytime. Instead, returns are intended, by the structure within which they operate, to be reports of only what the return-creator believes is relevant to the tax out of the greater class of "what came in" or "what went out".
SO WE SEE THAT A TAX RETURN IS A TESTIMONIAL INSTRUMENT-- evidence in a very narrow and rigidly circumscribed legal contest. It is the means by which a filer introduces his or her testimony (evidence) into a brief, judgeless, trial-by-paperwork concerning the question of who owes what to who relevant to the tax and in regard to the filer's activities over the period reported about on the return.
In this legal-contest testimonial role, a return might be filed to declare or acknowledge gains from taxable activities greater than the exemption amount; to rebut allegations of such gains; and/or to make a claim for the refund of amounts that have come into the government's hands against the possibility of a tax liability for the period involved.
This testimony-of-the-filer not as simply a "report of what came in" but as a declaration of the filer's conclusions concerning "what came in that is relevant to the tax"-- whether in endorsement or rebuttal of allegations of others or for purposes of one's own claims-- has been the statutory role of a 1040 from its inception, as clearly laid out in the statute establishing the purpose of the form:
"Sec. 93. And be it further enacted, ... Provided, that any party... shall be permitted to declare, under oath or affirmation, the form and manner of which shall be prescribed by the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, that he or she was not possessed of an income of six hundred dollars, liable to be assessed according to the provisions of this act, or that he or she has been assessed elsewhere and the same year for an income duty, under authority of the United States, and shall thereupon be exempt from an income duty; or, if the list or return of any party shall have been increased by the assistant assessor, in manner as aforesaid, he or she may be permitted to declare, as aforesaid, the amount of his or her annual income, or the amount held in trust, as aforesaid, liable to be assessed, as aforesaid, and the same so declared shall be received as the sum upon which duties are to be assessed and collected."
Only receipts of a type "liable to be assessed" are to be reported; this language clearly distinguishes a specific class of gains from all others, and clearly calls upon the filer to draw and apply this distinction when deciding what is to be reported on a return.
Click here to learn the distinction between of "income liable to be assessed" and gains, earnings and receipts NOT liable.