Discussion:Once again, the Tax Court and Charity

"Neither of their appraisals appraised the correct asset. Instead of appraisals of the Chateau stock conntributed to FHR, the Evenchiks gave the Commissioner appraisals of the underlying assets that Chateau held." I have no idea if the personal representative who represented the estate was an attorney, but doubt if any lawyer could have done much with this problem.

http://www.ustaxcourt.gov/InOpHistoric/Estofevenchik.TCM.WPD.pdf (Evenchik)

Again, I say all this with the important qualification that the value can be proven, it is not fake, it is not inflated, a good faith effort was made, etc. We saw a little bit of this in a recent conversation easement case where, I think it was the deed, was deemed to satisify the substantiation requirement...according to the judge.

Was reading a case about a local guy here in town:

Belk, B.V., Jr., (2013) Tax Ct 140 TC No 1.

$10.5m charitable contribution...denied...

I'm talking about the guy that gives money to his church and gets a bogus acknowledgement. Or a guy that gives stock, wherein we all know what the value is, but gets denied nonetheless. I have a feeling that in some of these cases, the taxpayer was a real a-hole and the IRS didn't take kindly to it.

But in all fairness to the government, it is the tax-paying public that got loosey goosey with their donations that led to the clamp down.

http://taxtrials.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/AverytMemo.TCM_.WPD.pdf

Contribution was $5.5m and taxpayer wins.

My point, in a case like this, is why is this even getting to trial when the one issue is just a piece of paper - the acknowledgement? Really? The record shows that Congress wanted to promote conservation donations. The record shows the taxpayer donated over 1,000 acres of land to a qualifying charity. Appraisal says it was worth $5.5m. Quite frankly, it's silly.

The reason it gets attacked is because it's an easy target, a big dollar amount and sticks out like a sore thumb on a 1065. It's much easier to deny a $5.5m deduction than it is to catch 110 taxpayers that willfully failed to report $50k of income each.

and the sequel (rather the remand)

http://www.ustaxcourt.gov/InOpHistoric/ScheidelmanMemo.TCM.WPD.pdf

Ms. Scheidelman was a far cry from Mr. Belk. Her accountant comes off pretty good here (he disappears from the storyline early).

Happy Valentine's Day, Mr. Crimi, or rather Mr. LaForge!! Should we send a copy to the Durdens?

Further, the Court found that the August 16 letter as a whole effectively stated that the $1,550,000 cash consideration was the only consideration the county provided for the contributed property. Thus no other superfluous statement (i.e., a statement as to whether the donee provided any goods or services in exchange) was required.

Really? The letter 'effectively' stated that was the 'only' consideration? And a church statement title "Annual Giving" does not 'effectively' state the same thing? That clears things up.

And I too wonder what "effectively" means...

I think Crimi's statement said, somewhere, somehow: "You only received $1.5m in cash." It didn't say, "You only rec'd $1.5m in cash and nothing else" or "You received $1.5m in cash and that's it. You got nothing else in return." Hence the judge's comment that adding the "and nothing else" was superfluous.