Court Opinion

ID: 9643453
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 20:29:28.942426+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:00.606215
License: Public Domain

L. HAND, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
It seems to me that this was not the kind of charitable association that the statute had in mind. Practically, it was a pool of the charitable contributions of the, Havemeyer family, distributed by two of them — the petitioner being one — helped by a business associate. True, it does not expressly appear that any member of the family could insist upon his contributions going to an especial person, and in law no doubt he could not; - but I cannot believe that practically this was not the case. I am not altogether clear that a taxpayer *708might deduct a contribution even to a standard charitable association, if in advance he were to exact an agreement that it should be devoted to a particular person. If the association asks him for special funds, of course, he may; but I am speaking of a case where he uses it merely as a conduit. However that may be, it was an inference which the Board might make that here this association was nothing else but a conduit. While the family was to manage the pot thr.ough three managers, of whom the petitioner was only one, I cannot take seriously the possibility that, at least as to his own contributions, his two associates would have attempted to gainsay any distribution he wished. It is significant for example that his and his wife’s distributions for 1932 just used up his contributions. As to him anyway and to the extent of the deductions now claimed, I think this association was pro hac vice merely a conduit. In general I believe that we ought not to countenance avoidance of taxes by the perpetual device of a corporation, organized only in form, and not- in reality, for the purposes intended by a statute.