- 7 - Respondent disallowed $60,509 of the claimed deductions because petitioners were unable to substantiate the existence and business purpose of most of the deductions. Preliminarily, we note that several issues in the dispute regarding these deductions revolve around petitioners’ inability to produce the source documents on which their 1999 income tax return was allegedly based. Petitioners engaged Howard Hertz (Mr. Hertz) to prepare their 1999 return. Mr. Hertz also represented petitioners during the subsequent examination of the 1999 return. Dr. Rinker alone assisted Mr. Hertz in preparing the 1999 return and in gathering documents for the subsequent examination of that return. Dr. Rinker claimed that she gave the documents which substantiated many of the figures on petitioners’ 1999 tax return to Mr. Hertz after Dr. Rinker, Mr. Hertz, and Dr. Rinker’s assistant organized the records at Dr. Rinker’s home one evening in 2002. Dr. Rinker claims that Mr. Hertz then lost the documents while the examination was being reviewed by respondent’s Appeals officer. Mr. Hertz testified that he never left Dr. Rinker’s home with the source documents after their meeting in 2002. Respondent takes the position that petitioners, and not Mr. Hertz, lost the records, or that they never maintained the records to begin with. As was true in Diaz v. Commissioner, 58 T.C. 560, 564 (1972):Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Next
Last modified: May 25, 2011