Court Opinion

ID: 9639425
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 16:17:34.011954+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:18.267967
License: Public Domain

.ANDERSON, J.
(concurring in result). This ease is an important one, not merely in the amount involved, but in the far-reaching consequences of the construction now given to the statutes. The gist is whether this ease is ruled by United States v. Chamberlin, 219 U. S. 250, 31 S. Ct. 155, 55 L.
Every item entering into the final base of the tax is in controversy.
Obviously under the rulings in the ma,jority opinion, executors and administrators may be moved to make returns — that is, to disclose the facts relative to the estates in their control — in order to avoid the penalties provided in section 410 (Comp. St. Ann. Supp. 1919, § 6336%k), for nondisclosure or incorrect disclosure, as well as by a desire to end the ten-year lien, in order to enable them to settle their estates. But such returns are now held to be in no sense necessary conditions precedent to the imposition of the tax and its collection by the government as a debt, with interest at the rate of 6 per cent. This theory permits no scope to the provision in section 407 for *203possible partial payment and subsequent assessment by the Commissioner of an additional tax with interest (in the nature of a penalty) at tbe rate of 10 per cent, if such additional tax remain unpaid longer than 30 days. Section 407 is said to be “a mere stopgap for tbe taxpayer’s benefit as to interest.”
Undoubtedly, if tbe law did impose and assess tbe tax now in question, tbe government may recover it as a debt. But I have not been able to convince myself that Congress intended the elaborate provisions of the statutes as to return and assessment by the Commissioner to be entirely disregarded, as the majority opinion in effect holds. It seems to me that the weight of argument is the other way. Some of the serious objections to such a theory of a general liability for taxes not assessed by any tax official are suggested in the dissenting opinion of Justices Bradley and Field in Dollar Savings Bank v. United States, 19 Wall. 227, 241, 22 L. Ed. 80.