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Herring-Bowcut, both the main action and the recoupment claim
are occasioned solely by deficiencies, whereas here that
characterization was available only for the proceeding before us
prior to issuance of our opinion in Mueller I. However, here
both the proceeding before us and the recoupment claim are
occasioned solely by inconsistent valuations of the same shares
of stock. There may not be a single taxable event here, but that
is really true in Herring-Bowcut as well. One can also speak of
our situation as a single transaction, decedent’s death, which
occasions the need to value the shares, both to determine the
gross estate for estate tax purposes and the step-up in basis for
income tax purposes. There is, moreover, the same fund, which
can be considered the same item. Cf. Estate of Vitt v. United
States, 706 F.2d 871, 875 (8th Cir. 1983) (taxation of same tract
of property and inclusion of identical part of value of that
property in two instances of imposition of estate tax sufficient
to satisfy single-transaction requirement); United States v. Gulf
Oil Corp., 485 F.2d 331, 333 (3d Cir. 1973) (taxation of same
fund all that is required); Boyle v. United States, 355 F.2d at
236 (taxation of identical “definite fund” all that is required).
This differences between the situation in Rothensies v.
Electric Storage Battery Co., on the one hand, and the Herring-
Bowcut-Wilmington Trust Co.-Bartels and the Ford-O'Brien-Mueller
situations, on the other, and the similarities of the latter two
sets of situations, are striking. In Rothensies v. Electric
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