Court Opinion

ID: 4492837
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2020-01-17 22:03:37.582838+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:03:58.434596
License: Public Domain

Vak FossaN,
dissenting: I find it necessary to dissent from the decision of the majority. In considering the right of a taxpayer to depletion, I am unwilling to decide the question on any basis so highly technical and artificial as that employed in the prevailing opinion. Under the reasoning of the majority, the right to depletion depends on the existence of a well on the property. Obviously the production of the well, provided there be a well, need bear no relation to the amount of depletion. The law allows a flat percentage of income from the property (not from the well) as depletion. The Supreme Court has held that a bonus is income. Therefore, if the bonus be paid and there happens to be a well in existence (however inconsequential the production) the taxpayer gets full statutory depletion. If there be no well, regardless of other conditions, the taxpayer gets no depletion. But assume a case where, as frequently happens, a bonus is paid in one year and there is no well completed until the next year. The taxpayer would get no depletion on account of the bonus (or advance royalties, as the Supreme Court has called them) because there was no well on the property though all surrounding property bore productive wells, nor would he get depletion of the bonus in the next year even if a producing well be completed, because the bonus was not income in that year. Variations of this illustration, emphasizing the absurdities of the situation, could easily be multiplied.
I am unable to see any defensible basis for. a distinction that would produce such an inequitable and illogical result. The prevailing-opinion introduces a new concept into the theory of depletion and in many cases sets at naught the intention of Congress as interpreted by the decisions of the Supreme Court so far as depletion of bonuses is concerned. Murphy Oil Co. v. Burnet, 287 U. S. 299. The cited case clearly decides that a bonus is depletable and makes no suggestion that this right should be governed by such a rule as is laid down by the majority. The court clearly suggests the opposite:
A distinction between royalties and bonus, which would allow a depletion deduction on the former but tax the latter in full as income, when received, making no provision for a reasonably anticipated production of oil on the leased premises, would deny the “reasonable allowance for depletion” which the statute provides. * * * [Italics supplied.]
Moreover, I further find myself in disagreement with the majority opinion in the summary manlier in which G. C. M. 11384 is disposed of. That the Commissioner is not now contending for such a rule as proposed by the majority is clear from this memorandum, which provides that depletion should be allowed if future production is practically assured because of nearby wells and geological indications. Whether this interpretation is too narrow it is not *1270necessary to discuss, but certainly it is broad enough to cover the instant case. The facts show that oil was being produced in the some township and in the same oil field. This brings the petitioner squarely within the first of the four situations referred to in the memorandum. The prevailing opinion dismisses the matter on the basis of failure of proof.
In my opinion the majority of the Board throughout this opinion have grasped at a shadow of diction and allowed the substance of the thought and intention of Congress and the Supreme Court to escape them.
LaNSDoN and Leech agree with this dissent.