Court Opinion

ID: 9426997
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:19:26.009502+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:04.392949
License: Public Domain

MR. Justice Blackmun,
with whom The Chief Justice joins, dissenting.
More than a decade ago the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, in United States v. Morelan, 356 F. 2d 199 (1966), held that the $3-per-day subsistence allowance paid Minnesota state highway patrolmen was excludable from gross income under § 119 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954, 26 U. S. C. §119. It held, alternatively, that if the allowance were includable in gross income, it was deductible as an ordinary and necessary meal-cost trade or business expense under § 162 (a) (2) of the Code, 26 U. S. C. § 162 (a) (2). I sat as a Circuit Judge on that case. I was happy to join Chief Judge Vogel's opinion because I then felt, and still do, that it was correct on both grounds. Certainly, despite the usual persistent Government opposition in as many Courts of Appeals as were available, the ruling was in line with other authority at the appellate level at that time.* *97Two cases, Magness v. Commissioner, 247 F. 2d 740 (CA5 1957), cert. denied, 355 U. S. 931 (1958), and Hyslope v. Commissioner, 21 T. C. 131 (1953), were distinguished. 356 F. 2d, at 207.
On December 11, 1967, however, this Court by a 5-3 vote decided United States v. Correll, 389 U. S. 299, restricting to overnight trips the travel-expense deduction for meal costs under §162 (a)(2). That decision, of course, disapproved Mor elan’s, alternative ground for decision. I am frank to say that had I been a Member of this Court at the time Correll was decided, I would have joined its dissent, 389 U. S., at 307, for I fully agree with Mr. Justice Douglas’ observation there, joined by Justices Black and Fortas — an observation which, for me, is unanswerable and unanswered — that the Court, with a bow to the Government’s argument for administrative convenience, and conceding an element of arbitrariness, id., at 303, read the word “overnight” into § 162 (a)(2), a statute that speaks only in geographical terms.
The taxpayer in the present case, faced with Correll, understandably does not press the § 162 (a) (2) issue, but confines his defense to §§ 61 and 119.
I have no particular quarrel with the conclusion that the payments received by the New Jersey troopers constituted income to them under § 61. I can accept that, but my stance in Mor elan leads me to disagree with the Court’s conclusion that the payments are not excludable under § 119. The Court draws an in-cash or in-kind distinction. This has no appeal or persuasion for me because the statute does not speak specifically in such terms. It does no more than refer to “meals . . . furnished on the business premises of the employer,” and from those words the Court draws the in-kind consequence. I am not so sure. In any event, for me, as was the case in Mor elan, the business premises of the State of *98New Jersey, the trooper’s employer, are wherever the trooper is on duty in that State. The employer’s premises are statewide.
The Court in its opinion makes only passing comment, with a general reference to fairness, on the ironical difference in tax treatment it now accords to the paramilitary New Jersey state trooper structure and the federal military. The distinction must be embarrassing to the Government in its position here, for the Internal Revenue Code draws no such distinction. The Commissioner is forced to find support for it— support which the Court in its opinion in this case does not stretch to find — only from a regulation, Treas. Reg. § 1.61-2 (b), 26 CFR § 1.61-2 (b) (1977), excluding subsistence allowances granted the military, and the general references in 37 U. S. C. § 101 (25) (1970 ed., Supp. V), added by Pub. L. 93-419, § 1, 88 Stat. 1152, to “regular military compensation” and “Federal tax advantage accruing to the aforementioned allowances because they are not subject to Federal income tax.” This, for me, is thin and weak support for recognizing a substantial benefit for the military and denying it for the New Jersey state trooper counterpart.
I fear that state troopers the country over, not handsomely paid to begin with, will never understand today’s decision. And I doubt that their reading of the Court’s opinion — if, indeed, a layman can be expected to understand its technical wording — will convince them that the situation is as clear as the Court purports to find it.

Saunders v. Commissioner, 215 F. 2d 768 (CA3 1954); United States v. Barrett, 321 F. 2d 911 (CA5 1963); Hanson v. Commissioner, 298 F. 2d *97391 (CA8 1962). As in Morelan, certiorari apparently was not sought in any of this line of cases up to that time.