# Smith v. Commissioner

> United States Tax Court · May 1, 1944 · 3 T.C. 696

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/4478127

## Case

- **Full name:** Luther Ely Smith v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue
- **Court:** United States Tax Court
- **Decided:** May 1, 1944
- **Citations:** 3 T.C. 696; 1944 U.S. Tax Ct. LEXIS 134
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Opper
- **Judges:** Opper
- **Cited by:** 14 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/4478127

## Opinion text

Opper, /., concurring: I agree that on the first point this proceeding is indistinguishable from the Keeble case, which I see no compelling reason for overruling now. But I do not think the result is otherwise supportable. Not only does it require that we eliminate the word “calendar” from the statute, an amendment I think beyond our province under the familiar rule that words employed in legislation are not lightly to be taken as meaningless, but the prevailing view also overlooks what seems to me a fairly evident purpose in the use of that word, that is, an intention to make it consistent with the normal taxable year, which, especially in the case of individuals, is likely to be the calendar year. See Internal Revenue Code, sec. 48. Thus, a taxpayer who comes squarely within the statutory definition with services extending over “a period of” exactly “five calendar years,” for example, would be at a tax disadvantage compared with another whose services covering a period of similar length fell into six taxable .years and thus permitted allocation to each of the years included in “such period,” or a division of the compensation into six parts instead of five.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/4478127. Public record. Not legal advice.