Court Opinion

ID: 9419374
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:49:10.122944+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:17.754841
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Reed
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case involves a claim by the taxpayer to treatment of itself and a subsidiary as a single taxable person. The writ of certiorari was granted because of uncertainties in this area of important federal tax law. See Moline Properties v. Commissioner, ante, p. 436, n. 1. Petitioner, Interstate Transit Lines, sought to deduct $28,100.66 as an ordinary and necessary business expense for the year 1936. § 23 (a), Revenue Act of 1936.1 This sum represented a credit to its subsidiary, Union Pacific Stages of California, pursuant to a contract by which petitioner was to be liable for all operating deficits of the subsidiary. The claimed deduction was disallowed and a deficiency determined. The Board of Tax Appeals sustained the Commissioner and the Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed the Board. Interstate Transit Lines v. Commissioner, 44 B. T. A. 957; 130 F. 2d 136.
*592Petitioner, a Nebraska corporation, operated an interstate bus transportation line between Illinois and California, and Missouri and Wyoming, and did an intrastate business in most of the states en route. Because of its foreign incorporation, petitioner was barred, under the California Railroad Commission’s interpretation of California law, from obtaining a certificate of public convenience to do intrastate business in California. To avoid this situation, petitioner in 1930 organized Stages in California as its wholly-owned subsidiary to do the business it was unable to do. It contracted with Stages that Stages was to operate solely for petitioner’s benefit and under petitioner’s direction; all profits were to be paid to petitioner and it was to reimburse Stages for any operating deficit. In addition to its own intrastate business, Stages was to carry on all of petitioner’s interstate business in California, the agreement providing that as each party’s buses crossed the state line, the other became its lessee. The lessee was to pay the lessor five cents per mile operated by the bus in the lessee’s custody. All this resulted in no change and no added expense in the business formerly done in respects other than accounting except for the addition to the gross revenues of the enterprise of the proceeds of intrastate California business. Petitioner kept Stages’ accounts, managed its finances and paid its bills and payroll. Each month petitioner apportioned between the two companies the revenues and expenses on the basis of passenger and traffic mileage. On the books of each a “clearing account” with the other showed the absorption by petitioner of Stages’ annual deficit or profit. It is the 1936 operating deficit of Stages, entered on the books of both on December 31 of that year, which petitioner now seeks to deduct as its business expense. Some years after 1936, by reason of a change in California law or its interpretation, petitioner became able to conduct intrastate *593business in California. Consequently Stages was dissolved and its assets and franchises transferred to petitioner. In 1932 and 1933, consolidated income tax returns were filed by petitioner pursuant to § 141 of the Revenue Act of 1932,47 Stat. 169,213.
Whether phrased as the payment of an expense in a business conducted for a principal by an agent or as a case where equity and reality require that the separate corporate identities be ignored or as the incurring under contract of a necessary expense, petitioner’s argument for its success depends on the contention that Stages’ operating deficit is an expense of petitioner’s business. Without this keystone the entire argument must fall. And we examine the argument in the light of the now familiar rule that an income tax deduction is a matter of legislative grace and that the burden of clearly showing the right to the claimed deduction is on the taxpayer. New Colonial Ice Co. v. Helvering, 292 U. S. 435, 440; Deputy v. du Pont, 308 U. S. 488, 493. The decision of the two courts below is that this burden has not been met.
This is not the case of a mere branch or division of a business conducted solely for convenience’ sake under a separate corporate form. Petitioner did an interstate bus business and was a corporation foreign to California. On the other hand, the business of Stages in the tax year in question was both interstate and intrastate. For petitioner to engage in intrastate business in California was, on the findings, illegal. Thus, the businesses of the two companies were distinct. Cf. Edwards v. Chile Copper Co., 270 U. S. 452, 454, 456; Texas-Empire Pipe Line Co. v. Commissioner, 127 F. 2d 220. Even assuming that the interstate business of Stages could be the business of the petitioner,2 it follows that at most only that part of *594the deficit attributable to Stages’ interstate business could be an expense of petitioner’s business and petitioner could not conceivably deduct as a business expense the cost of Stages’ intrastate business. There was no showing below as to the allocation of the deductions sought as between Stages’ intrastate and interstate business. There is thus no record requiring a further examination of petitioner’s argument since in the absence of affirmative proof to the contrary we must assume that the entire deficiency was found correctly by the Commissioner and that the deficit is attributable to Stages’ intrastate business.
It is no answer to this defect of proof that petitioner was obligated by contract to assume Stages’ deficit. The mere fact that the expense was incurred under contractual obligation does not of course make it the equivalent of a rightful deduction under § 23 (a). That subsection limits permitted deductions to those paid or incurred “in carrying on any trade or business.” The origin and nature, and not the legal form, of the expense sought to be deducted determines the applicability of the words of § 23 (a). Deputy v. du Pont, supra, 494. It was not the business of the taxpayer to pay the costs of operating an intrastate bus line in California. The carriage of intrastate passengers did not increase the business of the taxpayer. The profit earned on their carriage increased the taxpayer’s profit but so would any other profitable activity wholly disconnected from the taxpayer’s own business. As the Circuit Court pointed out, the assumption of the deficit was not dependent upon a corresponding service or benefit rendered to the petitioner by Stages in connection with petitioner’s business. 130 F. 2d 136, 139.
In view of these conclusions, it is unnecessary to characterize the payment by petitioner as a capital expenditure or otherwise, or to decide whether if the record were complete petitioner and Stages should be treated as a *595taxable entity for the claimed purpose. Cf. Moline Properties v. Commissioner, ante, p. 436.

-Affirmed.

 49 Stat. 1648:
“Sec. 23. Deductions from Gross Income.
“In computing net income there shall be allowed as deductions:
“(a) Expenses. — All the ordinary and necessary expenses paid or incurred during the taxable year in carrying on any trade or business . . .”

 Cf. Moline Properties v. Commissioner, ante, p. 436; Higgins v. Smith, 308 U. S. 473, 477, n. 8-10.