- 59 -
Storage Battery Co. there is no causal connection between the
main claim and the barred claim sought to be recouped (actually
set-off). In the latter two sets of situations, there is a
causal connection. In Herring-Bowcut-Bartels, the determination
and payment of an income tax deficiency gave rise to a time-
barred estate tax overpayment, which was allowed to be recouped
against that deficiency; in Wilmington Trust, the Court of
Claims, improperly, I believe, refused to allow the Government to
recoup time-barred estate tax deficiencies against the taxpayer
estates' recoveries of income tax refunds that generated those
deficiencies. Similarly, in our case, as in Ford and O'Brien,
the increase in the value of the shares for estate tax purposes
generated an estate tax deficiency and a correlative time-barred
income tax overpayment with respect to the same shares. In our
case the causal connection is clear; in Rothensies v. Electric
Storage Battery Co. there is no such connection.21
Moreover, in another significant respect, the situation in
the case at hand is further removed from the Rothensies v.
Electric Storage Battery Co. situation than Herring and Bowcut:
Here, all the events happened within the same calendar year,
21The excursus in the text further sharpens the point of my
observation in Fort Howard Corp. v. Commissioner, 103 T.C. 345,
377 n.2 (1994) (Beghe, J., dissenting), that for tax purposes the
connections that are important are not so much the logical
connections arrived at by reference to the laws of thought and
correct syllogistic reasoning as the "logic of events" that has
to do with cause and effect relationships and necessary
connections or outcomes.
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