- 24 -
charge for the privilege of trading on the CBOT. However, we
held early on that some kinds of assessments imposed upon
cooperative housing members by the cooperative are nontaxable
contributions to capital. We will look to these cases to find
some of the objective factors for our inquiry.14
In 874 Park Ave. v. Commissioner, 23 B.T.A. 400 (1931), a
housing cooperative corporation, pursuant to the terms of the
proprietary leases, levied assessments on its tenant-shareholders
for the purpose of amortizing debt secured by mortgages on its
property. The taxpayer used the assessments to amortize the
mortgage debt and credited the payments to its capital stock
account. The Board of Tax Appeals held that these assessments
14 Respondent argues that housing cooperative cases are
inapplicable because of "the special relationship between the
shareholder-tenants and the cooperative, insofar as the tax
statutes are concerned", citing Eckstein v. United States, 196
Ct. Cl. 644, 665, 452 F.2d 1036, 1048 (1971), which concerned
whether the payments by tenant-shareholders to be applied to the
mortgage were income to the corporation for the purpose of the
80-percent requirement of sec. 216(b). Eckstein refers to cases
cited in Lake Forest, Inc. v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 1963-39,
on which Eckstein relies, along with Cambridge Apartment Bldg.
Corp. v. Commissioner, 44 B.T.A. 617 (1941), and 874 Park Ave. v.
Commissioner, 23 B.T.A. 400 (1931). All this Court said in Lake
Forest is that it did not interpret United Grocers, Ltd. v.
United States, 308 F.2d 634 (9th Cir. 1962); James Hotel Co. v.
Commissioner, 39 T.C. 135 (1962), affd. 325 F.2d 280 (10th Cir.
1963); Affiliated Govt. Employees Distrib. Co., 37 T.C. 909
(1962), affd. 322 F.2d 872 (9th Cir. 1963); Federal Employees'
Distrib. Co. v. United States, 206 F. Supp. 330 (S.D. Cal.,
1962), judgment revd. 322 F.2d 891 (9th Cir. 1963), as requiring
a different result.
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