- 15 - house but also the house furnishings and the art collection, have no apparent significance in the determination of whether petitioner received any benefit from the understatement. Another factor to be considered is whether the spouses have been divorced. Flynn v. Commissioner, supra at 367; sec. 1.6013- 5(b), Income Tax Regs. Given the couple's uneasy relationship throughout their marriage, we do not attach particular significance to the fact that they have remained together. Petitioner characterized her marriage as not one "made in heaven", and testified that because of her chronic health problem, which appears to have persisted throughout most of her adult life, she "couldn't think of leaving, because how was I going to take care of myself?" Petitioner first discovered in 1984 that Harvey had been "sheltering" his income in the relevant years. Other recent cases have considered the impact and reliability of a spouse's promise to pay any tax deficiencies resulting from grossly erroneous items. See, e.g., Friedman v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 1995-576 (on remand from 53 F.3d 523); Stiteler v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 1995-279; Foley v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 1995-16. But in the instant case the record only reveals a struggle by both spouses to pay unidentified Federal tax bills, with Arlene contributing $34,000 at one point from money received from her father, and the couple selling their comfortable home to raise cash with which to payPage: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Next
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