- 27 - agent. Termination payments are provided for in the section entitled "Termination Payments" and are as described by the majority. The Agreement provides that it is the sole and entire agreement between the parties. No part of the agreement has to do with anything other than the beginning, middle, and end of petitioner’s business relationship with State Farm. The termination payments were conditioned on petitioner’s returning to State Farm all of its property and not competing with State Farm for 1 year, and those payments were a product of both petitioner’s performance during his last year with State Farm and the staying power of petitioner’s performance for State Farm. The payments were not otherwise identified as being in consideration for any particular contractual obligation of petitioner’s under the Agreement. Some portion of the termination payments may have been in consideration for petitioner’s promise not to compete for 1 year. The majority’s report does not contain sufficient information from which to make an allocation. Moreover, I am not convinced that, even if such information were available, an allocation would be required. In Barrett v. Commissioner, 58 T.C. 284, 289 (1972) (rejected sub silentio with respect to its focus on the "goods-and-services test" in Groetzinger v. Commissioner, 82 T.C. 793 (1984), affd. 771 F.2d 269 (7th Cir. 1985), affd. 480 U.S. 23 (1987)), we accepted the parties’ agreement “that noncompetition does not constitute the carrying on of a trade or business." In addition,Page: Previous 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 Next
Last modified: May 25, 2011