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was under any obligation to do. It is settled that
such a promise to make payments in the future "wholly
contingent upon facts and circumstances not possible to
foretell with anything like fair certainty" has no
ascertainable fair market value. Burnet v. Logan, 283
U.S. 404, 413, 51 S. Ct. 550, 552, 75 L.Ed. 1143. [Id.
at 729 (quoting Cassatt v. Commissioner, 137 F.2d 745,
748 (3d Cir. 1943), affg. 47 B.T.A. 400 (1942)).]
Therefore, for the same reasons as given in MacDonald, we hold
that at the time of the corporation's liquidation it had no
goodwill, either in terms of a client list or in any other form,
which could be distributed to the individual shareholders or sold
to a third party.
We have carefully considered the testimony of respondent's
experts who testified that in their opinion a fair value of the
corporation would be $870,000, of which $266,000 would represent
the value of the client list and $369,000 would represent
goodwill.7 However, we conclude that their opinion regarding the
intangible assets of the corporation is of no probative force in
light of other evidence of record and existing case law.
Respondent's experts based their opinion as to the value of
the goodwill and the client list upon an approximation of
earnings that they made based upon the volume of business
actually done by the corporation but using cost percentages
7Respondent made no separate determination as to any going-
concern-value that the corporation may have had. Moreover,
respondent's experts fail to attribute any value to such an
asset.
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