Court Opinion

ID: 9445373
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:26:50.430787+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:13.991958
License: Public Domain

WOODBURY, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
The fundamental question in this case is whether the taxpayer received the corporation’s money or her husband’s money in payment for her stock. If the money were the corporation’s, she is liable as a transferee; if the money were her husband’s, she is not. There are, I concede, indications pointing both ways on this issue. But as I read the evidence outlined in the opinion of the court, taking into account also the fact that she was paid book value for her stock and not its value in liquidation, I do not see how it can be said that the Commissioner has sustained his burden of showing by a balance of the probabilities that the money she received for her stock was the corporation’s, and that her husband was but the means by which it was transferred from it to her. In short, on my analysis of the evidence I am prepared to say that the Tax Court clearly erred in concluding that the Commissioner had sustained his *495statutory burden of proof. I would reverse outright and therefore see no reason to discuss what I consider certain difficulties standing in the way of the result reached by my associates.