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testified that she told petitioner that he could not
recharacterize payments on the buy-sell agreement as payments on
a bonus and that petitioner told her that Cutshall had advised
him otherwise. Cutshall testified that, if petitioner had asked
for her advice, she would have told him that he could not so
recharacterize the payments. Petitioner disregarded Scanlon-
Hull’s position that he could not convert any portion of his
personal obligation to make payments under the buy-sell agreement
into bonus payments from INI to Burke’s estate. Later when
respondent demanded that INI, petitioner, and Burke’s estate all
treat the INI payments consistently, petitioner attempted to
persuade the estate to file amended returns consistent with his
story that the buy-sell obligation had been renegotiated and
reduced and superseded to that extent by bonus payments from INI.
When the estate refused to go along with petitioner’s story,
petitioner filed amended returns treating the “bonus” payments to
Burke’s estate as “bonus” payments to petitioner. The fact that
petitioner twice attempted to recharacterize the transaction to
preserve a colorable claim of an income tax deduction for
compensation paid by INI demonstrates that petitioner had enough
knowledge about tax law to understand the tax implications of his
course of conduct. It was that knowledge that informed his
course of conduct, the driving force of which was his desire to
get $150,000 into the hands of Burke’s estate at the least tax
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