Court Opinion

ID: 9450847
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 16:59:35.223268+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:28.748396
License: Public Domain

JOHN R. BROWN, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
Of course hobby kits like tea chests have much in common. Both are non-provocative objects. But in determining the taxability of leather kits made for cub scouts, prison inmates, disabled veterans, and the like, I would doubt that in this sometimes weird contemporary tax world we are facing the tax tyrannies of George III. Likewise, I think it only adds to our problems to cast interpretation of tax statutes into the mold of strict or liberal construction. But I entertain no doubt of the correctness of this decision and the fabric of Judge HUTCHESON’S writing for us. I would add only that it is ironic that our answer to the Executive’s importunities to stretch this statute to these artificial extents coincides with the Executive’s strong recommendations to the Congress that it obliterate this tax altogether. For a nation of hobbyists with the ubiquitous do-it-your-self kits in the hands of the young, the old, the strong, the infirm, the upright, and the wayward it is inconceivable that during all of this time Congress has been oblivious to this national activity. What Congress has so long deliberately left untouched, the Judiciary at five minutes to twelve ought not to grasp.