Court Opinion

ID: 9638141
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 15:34:47.839758+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:04.136296
License: Public Domain

HEALY, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
The Board found that “in 1927 and prior to December 31 thereof” the taxpayer unconditionally renounced his right to compensation for the last half of that year; that the money renounced was the absolute property of Bancitaly to be used as it saw fit; and that Bancitaly donated the money to the University. While, for the most part, the circumstances and inferences to be drawn from the record point realistically in the direction of the taxpayer’s exercise *642of command over the-money, it was for the Board to draw the inferences and to determine the credibility of the witnesses. We are bound to accept the Board’s findings if, as is the case here, there is evidence to support them.
The Commissioner argues that so far as concerns the question of taxation it is immaterial whether the taxpayer “directed Bancitaly Corporation to pay his compensation to the University of California or whether he merely told his employer to keep it. The amount involved was his income before he could make any disposition of it.” If this view were accepted it would be applicable only to compensation “accruing” under the contingent contract up to the date of the disclaimer, which was found to be prior to December 31, 1927. It is clear that subsequent to the renunciation the taxpayer donated his services for the balance of the year to the bank. Whatever the taxpayer relinquished to the bank was relinquished in 1927, and whatever the bank received in the way of a gift was received in that year. Considering the bank as the donee of income earned prior to the renunciation of the contract, it seems inescapable that a tax predicated upon the constructive receipt of such income by the taxpayer would fall in 1927 rather than in 1928; and the latter is the only tax year before us.