- 20 - as the controlling shareholder of Shin. Individual petitioners allege that Edward Chiu, an 18-percent shareholder, made these decisions and actually controlled Shin as its general manager. The fact that petitioner husband permitted Edward to make day-to- day decisions does not mitigate or change petitioner husband's control of Shin. Indeed, petitioner husband had the ability to fire and replace Edward. We hold that petitioner husband exercised control over the bank accounts through his controlling interest in Shin, as described above, satisfying the first part of the Sammons test. The second part of the test is subjective: whether the transfer was prompted by a shareholder purpose of the common owner rather than a business purpose of the transferor corporation. Sammons v. Commissioner, supra. The second test is to differentiate between normal business transactions and transactions intended to benefit a common shareholder. Id. at 451-452. If the transfer between the commonly controlled corporations related to the business operations of the transferor corporation, no constructive dividend occurred. Courts have interpreted this prong of the Sammons test to require not only a subjective intent to primarily benefit the common shareholder but also an actual primary economic benefit to the shareholder. Stinnett's Pontiac Serv. Inc. v. Commissioner, 730 F.2d 634 (11th Cir. 1984), affg. T.C. Memo. 1982-314; Kuper v. Commissioner, 533 F.2d 152, 160 (5th Cir. 1976), affg. in partPage: Previous 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 Next
Last modified: May 25, 2011