Court Opinion

ID: 9423371
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:07:24.641498+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:39.340798
License: Public Domain

*297Mr. Justice Douglas,
with whom Mr. Justice Black and Mr. Justice Fortas concur, dissenting.
The resolution of this case depends upon whether respondent was “away from home” when he incurred the expenses.1 The term “home” is not defined.
The Treasury’s administrative rulings for many years have indeed treated the statutory word “home” as meaning a taxpayer’s principal place of business or employment. See Commissioner v. Flowers, 326 U. S. 465, 471-472. To me it is clear that home means residence, with the qualification that a taxpayer should establish his residence as near to his place of employment as is reasonable. Ibid. Here the taxpayer was forbidden by military orders to take his family with him. He was, in other words, barred from taking his home with him whenever he went on military orders. The Commissioner points to the difficulty of having any rule other than the- fixed one that “home” means the taxpayer’s principal place of business or employment. It is said that if the rule is not rigid, a great complex of facts would have to be considered: adequacy of housing at the new post, expense of moving, school facilities, health of the family, the need to care for elderly or ailing relatives, and the like. Only a fixed rule provides certainty, it is said; any other would threaten the desire, for uniformity.
*298While equity is seldom an ingredient of the tax laws, while they are indeed inherently discriminatory in many ways, reflecting perquisites obtained by pressure groúps,2 we need not increase their harshness by giving simple words unusual or strained meanings — unless of course Congress has plainly made an arbitrary choice.
If the taxpayer chooses to maintain his residence at a place far removed from his place of business, the travel expenses are not “ordinary and necessary” since not dictated by business needs. Commissioner v. Flowers, supra. On the other hand, if the taxpayer cannot reasonably maintain his residence at his place of business, the travel expenses are “ordinary and necessary” and hence deductible. Such an interpretation would give effect to the congressional policy of allowing a deduction for expenses dictated by the needs of the taxpayer’s employment.
In this case there can be no question that the expenses were incurred in the pursuit of the taxpayer’s employment and that respondent could not move his residence to Iwakuni. There can be no question, that the expenses were motivated by “[t]he exigencies of business rather than the personal conveniences and necessities of the” respondent. Commissioner v. Flowers, supra, at 474. I cannot see how the result is changed simply because respondent is a member of the armed services. The fact that Congress has afforded members of the military special allowances is no indication that Congress intended *299that they not be allowed to deduct “ordinary a,nd necessary” expenses incurred while away from their residence. Respondent received the same pay and basic allowances while in the Far East as he did while residing with his family in the United States. There was no increase to help defray the increased expenses incurred by him while required to live away from his family.

 Section 162 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 provides in relevant part:
“(a) In General. — There shall be allowed as a deduction all the ordinary and necessary expenses paid or incurred during the taxable year in carrying on any trade or business, including—

“(2) traveling expenses (including the entire amount expended for meals and lodging) while away from home in the pursuit of a trade or business . . . .”

 assume that a farmer has a herd of hogs. Each year he selects certain young to be bred. After each sow has one litter, she is turned out to be conditioned for slaughter. The profits on the sale of the pigs unbred are taxable as ordinary income. But the profits on the sale of the pigs bred once are taxable as capital gains. They have been held as business properties producing other pigs. The fact that all the pigs are equally destined to be sold and eaten is unimportant.” Eisenstein, The Ideologies of Taxation 174 (1961).