- 7 - tax. The Commissioner determined that petitioner was not an employee during 1981 and 1982 but was instead an independent contractor. Following this determination by the Commissioner, petitioner paid, in 1991, deficiencies in self-employment tax for 1981 and 1982 and interest on those liabilities. As indicated above, the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, to which an appeal in this case would lie, held in Commissioner v. Polk, supra, that interest paid by an individual taxpayer on an income tax deficiency was deductible as an ordinary and necessary expense where the deficiency resulted from the taxpayer's understatement of his business income. However, the facts of Polk are distinguishable from the facts herein. The taxpayer in Polk raised and produced livestock and used an inven- tory accounting method that required him to value his livestock yearly. The Court of Appeals stated that, because properly valuing livestock is not an exact science, the taxpayer's under- reporting of income arose because of the nature of his business and is "ordinarily and necessarily to be expected." Commissioner v. Polk, supra at 603. Thus, the interest on the deficiency was held to be an ordinary and necessary business expense. Id. Unlike the taxpayer in Polk, here petitioner has not made a showing that the part of the 1981 and 1982 income tax deficien- cies resulting from his failure to pay self-employment tax, and on which he paid interest, arose as a normal or usual incident of his business as a furniture lumper. Petitioners argue that it isPage: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Next
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