natural gas company entitled to deduct currently costs of converting customer appliances
How later courts described this case
- natural gas company entitled to deduct currently costs of converting customer appliances
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
WHITAKER, Judge
(dissenting).
There is much to be said for the opinion of the majority, but I am inclined to think that the expenditures for the adaptation of customers’ appliances to the use of natural gas are not deductible as ordinary and necessary business expenses for this reason:
The expenditures plaintiff made to convert the equipment in its own plants and pipe lines for the use of natural gas were not ordinary and necessary business expenses, but undoubtedly were capital expenditures. But these capital expenditures were worthless without the conversion also of its customers’ appliances. In order to give value to its own equipment, it was required to spend money to convert its customers’ appliances. The money so spent should be added to the cost of conversion of its own equipment and deducted, by way of depreciation or amortization, over a period of years, and not wholly in the year expended. Cf. Teitelbaum v. Commissioner, 7 Cir., 294 F.2d 541 .