Court Opinion

ID: 9470015
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:55:15.626716+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:41:41.272358
License: Public Domain

WINTER, Circuit Judge,
concurring in the result:
I have no quarrel with the majority’s analysis of the relevant statutory provisions and regulations. As the opinion recognizes, the result we reach is to a degree arbitrary since we deny deductibility to certain expenses which, on this record at least, are unquestionably for genuine medical purposes. Nevertheless, the statutory and regulatory scheme purposefully denies deductibility apparently because this and similar recurring situations raise factual issues in which the true need for medical care is *62often difficult to determine. Because both Congress and the appropriate regulatory authorities have decided that the danger to the federal fisc of slippery slope analysis outweighs an ostensibly fairer and more searching approach, we must affirm the Tax Court.
My difference with the majority has to do with its view of the decision of the Seventh Circuit in Kelly v. Commissioner, 440 F.2d 307 (7th Cir.1971). Because I believe that the Levines’ expenses for their son’s food and lodging are a fortiori deductible under the theory of Kelly, I write separately. If, on the one hand, we are going to accept the harsh result dictated by the relevant statutory provisions and regulations, we should not create a substantial area of doubt, on the other, by attempting to reconcile our decision with the contrary and more lenient decisions of another circuit.
In Kelly, the taxpayer’s presence in New York City was a medical necessity resulting from his operation. Because the hospital was overcrowded and Kelly was well enough to recuperate with the assistance of his wife, which amounted only to the care a spouse would administer at home, Kelly was moved to a hotel. The theory of the Kelly court was “that [the] taxpayer’s condition, the nature of the services he required before he could travel home, and the hospital needs for his room, were the only reasons why he had to pay a hotel for food and lodging.” Id. at 311.
I believe the Levines’ case is stronger so far as the deductibility of expenses for their son’s food and lodging is concerned. He faces a medical imperative of living in Topeka in order to obtain the only suitable treatment for his mental illness. In a perverse departure from the facts in Kelly, however, Guy Levine cannot take advantage of the Menninger Clinic’s adult apartment living program, for which the expenses would be deductible, see IRS Letter Ruling 7714016, [1977] 9 Stand.Fed. Tax Rep. (CCH) 16950 (Jan. 10, 1977), not because he is too well, but because he is too ill. Thus, he has been forced to lease an apartment in Topeka, much as Kelly took a hotel room in New York, wholly for medical purposes. Indeed, resort to a non-institutional residence was more of a medical necessity in the case of Guy Levine than in the case of Mr. Kelly.
The majority agrees that Kelly’s hotel lodging is analogous to Guy Levine’s apartment but argues that Kelly’s deduction of hotel costs were proper because his wife was present and rendered assistance. This distinction borders on the bizarre in my view. The services were merely spousal care which would have been available wherever Kelly was located and the cost of the hotel room was in no way related to obtaining such care. Moreover, if the assistance provided by Kelly’s wife is significant, such a view might arguably render even the expenses of hiring Mr. Glassman deductible since his handling of Guy Levine’s daily affairs is a medically necessary function in the case of a person with a partially incapacitating mental illness living in a non-institutional residence.
I would, therefore, reject Kelly explicitly. To do otherwise invites taxpayers with weaker cases than that presently before us to litigate the deductibility of similar expenses.