Court Opinion

ID: 9448893
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 23:48:11.768433+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:35.673125
License: Public Domain

CHAMBERS, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
While the foregoing opinion is adequate, it does not disclose that the amounts attempted to be deducted are great. Our decision, if it stands, means that Lawyer Hearn may have to spend the next five or ten years working off the deficiency with tax-paid dollars. I have a great deal of sympathy for him in his predicament. But representing himself, he, as most lawyers do when they represent themselves, has refused to recognize the weakness of his case. He contends, as I read the record, that the entertainment items were really distasteful to him, but that entertain extravagantly he must to make an adequate living professionally *434in San Francisco. But it was open to the tax court to listen to his testimony and conclude that he really enjoyed, per se, his social activities. I do not say he enjoyed them, but it was a permissible inference for a trier of fact.
Also, while the commissioner makes no point of it, there well may be a question in the next similar case (where the taxpayer has his deductions well documented) as to the legality of such large deductions at all for a lawyer for “business getting.” I am sure many deduct therefor in a modest way, but I wonder about the cost of an intensive campaign to get legal business. On that, I reserve my dicta.