Court Opinion

ID: 9423547
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:08:12.166847+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:44.774465
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Douglas,
with whom Mr. Justice Black and Mr. Justice Fortas concur,
dissenting.
The statutory words “while away from home,” 26 U. S. C. §162 (a)(2), may not in my view be shrunken to “overnight” by administrative construction or regulations. “Overnight” injects a time element in testing deductibility, while the statute speaks only in terms of geography. As stated by the Court of Appeals:
“In an era of supersonic travel, the time factor is hardly relevant to the question of whether or not travel and meal expenses are related to the taxpayer’s business and cannot be the basis of a valid regulation under the present statute.” Correll v. United States, 369 F. 2d 87, 89-90.
I would affirm the judgment below.