Court Opinion

ID: 9653303
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 17:43:25.398667+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:57.670473
License: Public Domain

CLARK, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
Without necessarily disagreeing with my brother’s reasoning, I had felt that we might dispose of the case more simply and without becoming involved in doctrines of relating back, setoff, etc. As the opinion states, the payments must certainly be income to one or the other of the parties; why not to that one who has the greater number of attributes of ownership? Here the analogy of ownership to a “bundle” of rights is useful; who has the more, Mrs. Moore or DeGuire? And for tax purposes, we should look to practicalities, disregarding merely formal and not useful rights and piercing such general abstractions as “option.” Comparing beneficial rights, as well as powers and privileges, of the two, it seems to me we cannot avoid the conclusion that DeGuire has many more as to the stock than has Mrs. Moore. This was in substance the view of the majority in the Seventh Circuit. Moore v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 7 Cir., 124 F.2d 991; in fact it has been reiterated by the entire court in a case on all fours, Lee v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 7 Cir., 143 F.2d 4. In view of Judge Minton’s opinion in the Moore case I need not enumerate the details of DeGuire’s rights, but may content myself by saying in summary that by virtue of his purchase, and until and unless he chose to throw away the large payment he had made, he substantially controlled not merely the stock, but the corporation itself, its officers, directors, and policies.