- 12 -
Petitioner claims that he is not the individual who ought to
be properly charged with the money Dr. Chan and Shanghai Clinic
paid for the lessons that petitioner taught. We disagree.
Petitioner testified that, in 1990, Dr. Chan offered, merely
as a sign of gratitude on his own volition, to write petitioner a
check for any amount petitioner requested. Instead, petitioner
instructed Dr. Chan to show his gratitude by sending a gift or
check to Yao Min Ting, the person from whom petitioner learned
the principles and philosophy of Taoism. Petitioner and Dr. Chan
did not discuss a particular amount; instead, Dr. Chan was to
separate his gifts into different installments as he saw fit.
Dr. Chan contradicts this, saying that the money he paid was a
fee for lessons and not a gift.
Dr. Chan credibly testified that the checks were not made
out to petitioner only because petitioner requested that they be
made out in other people's names. Dr. Chan did not question why
petitioner requested that the checks, in payment for lessons
given by himself, were to be made out to other persons.
One of the primary principles of our system of income
taxation is that income must be taxed to the one that earns it.
Commissioner v. Culbertson, 337 U.S. 733, 739-740 (1949).
Attempts to subvert this principle by deflecting income away from
the true earner to another entity, however clever, will not be
successful. Lucas v. Earl, 281 U.S. 111 (1930). The choice of
the proper taxpayer revolves around the question of which person
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Next
Last modified: May 25, 2011