Court Opinion

ID: 9419319
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:48:38.974589+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:17.450454
License: Public Domain

Me. Justice Frankfurter,
dissenting:
When Congress wished to exempt income “attributable to the discharge ... of any indebtedness” it did so explicitly. It defined such exemption with particularity and only to a limited extent, as illustrated by the various enactments, including § 114 of the Revenue Act of 1942, all of which appear to throw light leading away from and not towards the conclusion drawn from them by the Court. In the absence of such specific exemption of what as a practical matter may be income, determination of whether it is or is not income should be left to the tribunal whose special business it is to ascertain the controverted facts and the reasonable inferences from them. In deciding that, in the circumstances of the present case, the debt cancellations were not gifts and therefore taxable, the Board of Tax Appeals (now the Tax Court of the United States) did not invoke wrong legal standards. It knew well enough the difference between taxable income and gifts. It applied these legal concepts to its interpretation of the facts. That its judgment should not be upset is counselled by wise fiscal as well as judicial administration.
Mr. Justice Jackson joins in this dissent.