Court Opinion

ID: 9486478
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 11:48:53.108949+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:51:44.225836
License: Public Domain

PHILLIPS, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
*691I agree completely with Judge Michael’s excellent legal analysis leading to the conclusions that (1) Ithaca Industries’ claimed deduction is not defeated by the mass asset rule, and (2) could only be defeated by a determination that its workforce either had no ascertainable value upon acquisition or no ascertainable limited life thereafter. I disagree however, with the further conclusion that we should decide as a matter of law on this appeal that it had neither.
Those issues should, I believe, be remanded for first instance determination by the Tax Court where they were raised but not decided. I think we jump the gun in deciding (as I read the majority opinion) that as a matter of law no statistical methodology (not just that of Ithaca Industries’ original proffer) could provide a sufficiently trustworthy evidentiary basis for finding both ascertainable value and limited useful life for this work force. See pp. 689-91. I believe instead that the Tax Court as trier-of-fact should originally make that assessment. It might well decide, after carefully considering the proffered evidence, that it had just the inherent incapacity the majority assigns it. But it might in the context of an appropriate evidentiary hearing find a sufficiency of strength that we are not in too good a position to assess without benefit of any first-instance effort by the base-line trier-of-fact.
For that reason, I would remand those issues for determination by the Tax Court.