Case Name: Stanley Switlik, Petitioner, et al., v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, Respondent
Court: United States Tax Court
Jurisdiction: United States
Decision Date: 1949-07-20
Citations: 13 T.C. 121
Docket Number: Docket Nos. 17160-17164
Parties: Stanley Switlik, Petitioner, et al., v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, Respondent.
Judges: 
Reporter: Reports of the Tax Court of the United States
Volume: 13
Pages: 121–128

Head Matter:
Stanley Switlik, Petitioner, et al., v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, Respondent.
Docket Nos. 17160-17164.
Promulgated July 20, 1949.
Walter J. Scott, Esq., and J. Stanley Teunon, G. P. A., for the petitioners.
Francis X. Gallagher, Esq., for the respondent.
Proceedings of the following petitioners are consolidated herewith : P. Wanda Switlik; Lottie Switlik ; Walter Switlik; and Richard Switlik.

Opinion:
OPINION
HaRlan, Judge:
Petitioners contend that each of them is entitled to claim as an ordinary loss, deductible in full, the amount he or she paid in satisfaction of transferee liability. The respondent contends that the payment made by each petitioner grew out of, was related to, and took its character from a capital transaction, i. e., a long term capital gain, that it was in effect a reversal of this transaction, and, therefore, should be subjected to the same limitation as the original transaction. He concedes that each petitioner who contributed to the satisfaction of the transferee liability is entitled to a deduction for a loss, but urges that the loss was a long term capital loss and not an ordinary loss.
Prior to the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in North American Oil Consolidated v. Burnet, 286 U. S. 417, this Court, then the United States Board of Tax Appeals, held in cases involving facts similar to those in the instant proceeding that the corporate taxes paid by transferees in a year subsequent to the receipt of distributions in liquidation should be treated as reducing the amount of those distributions rather than as a loss in the year the corporate taxes were paid. O. B. Barker, 3 B. T. A. 1180; Benjamin Paschal O'Neal, 18 B. T. A. 1036. In the North American case the Supreme Court said that "if a taxpayer receives earnings under a claim of right and without restriction as to its disposition, he has received income which he is required to return, even though it may still be claimed that he is not entitled to retain the money, and even though he may still be adjudged liable to restore its equivalent," and that if in a later year the taxpayer is obliged to refund profits received in a prior year he is entitled to a deduction from the profits of the later year, not from those of any earlier year. In John T. Furlong, 45 B. T. A. 362, the Board pointed out that North American Oil Consolidated v. Burnet, supra, overruled the Barker and O'Neal cases, and it held that a participant in a syndicate who reported his profits in 1928 and 1929 and was required to contribute in 1937 to pay taxes due from the syndicate was entitled to deduct the amount paid in 1937 as a loss under section 23 (e) (2) of the Revenue Act of 1936. The decision in the Furlong case was followed by this Court in Koppers Co., 3 T. C. 62 (affirmed on other issues, 151 Fed. (2d) 267). In that case a corporation in 1933 received the assets of two corporations in taxable distributions and assumed liability to pay any tax deficiencies thereafter determined against the transferors. It also sold, in 1935, its stock in a third corporation, agreeing as a condition of the sale to pay any tax liability thereafter determined against such corporation for years prior to the year of sale. At the time of these transactions no tax liability on the part of any of the three corporations was known to exist. In later years, deficiencies were determined against the three corporations and transferee liabilities asserted against petitioner, which were determined in amount and paid in 1938. We held that the amount of the deficiencies, with interest thereon, so paid by the corporation was deductible by it as a loss in 1938.
Respondent seeks to distinguish the Furlong case from the instant proceedings on the ground that the profits made by the petitioner therein were not long term capital gains from sales of capital assets held for more than two years, and the Koppers Co. case on the ground that the transferee in that proceeding was a corporation to which the capital gain provisions did not apply. For reasons hereinafter set forth, however, we think that under the rationale of these two cases petitioners are entitled to deduct as ordinary losses the amounts paid by them in satisfaction of their liability as transferees.
The petitioners, as stockholders of the Switlik Parachute & Equipment Co., received distributions in complete liquidation of that corporation in 1941 under a claim of right and without restriction as to disposition. Under such circumstances they correctly reported the capital gain resulting from such distributions as income in 1941. These distributions became the property of petitioners and their inclusion in gross income gave petitioners a basis for gain or loss. When, in 1944, Stanley Switlik, Lottie Switlik, Walter Switlik, and Richard Switlik satisfied their liability as transferees by payments that did not exceed the amount of the liquidating distribution received by each of them in 1941, they were entitled to loss deductions. The losses they sustained were not, however, capital losses, as they were not losses from the sale or exchange of capital assets (cf. Avery R. Schiller, 43 B. T. A. 594), and this is true even though the transferee liability which occasioned the losses arose out of distributions which resulted in capital gains in 1941. The sale or exchange of capital assets occurred in 1941 and not in 1944. The losses sustained by petitioners as a result of satisfaction of their liability as transferees in 1944 were, therefore, ordinary losses, and respondent erred in failing to allow the entire amount of the deficiencies plus interest to August 10, 1941, paid by each petitioner, as a deduction from gross income.
Reviewed by the Court.
Decision will he entered wnder Rule 50.