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excess of $300,000 in capital gains, mostly short-term gains.
Bramnick urged that petitioner acquire two units of the Plymouth
partnership for $100,000, but Bach, the tax return preparer,
counseled that $50,000 of this transaction was enough. The
direct reductions claimed on petitioners' 1981 tax return, from
the investment tax credits alone, equaled 165 percent of their
cash investment. Therefore, like the taxpayers in Provizer v.
Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 1992-177, "except for a few weeks at the
beginning, petitioners never had any money in the * * * [Plymouth
transaction]." A reasonably prudent person would have asked a
qualified adviser if such a windfall were not too good to be
true. McCrary v. Commissioner, 92 T.C. at 850.
Petitioner's own testimony is the only account in the record
regarding the advice petitioner received from Bach and Bramnick.
Bach could not recall the substance of his communications with
petitioner, and Bramnick did not testify in the trial of this
case.4 Petitioner's testimony in this case is self-serving and
often not credible, and this Court is not required to accept it
4 Petitioners failure to call Bramnick to testify gives rise
to the inference that his testimony would not have been favorable
to them. See Mecom v. Commissioner, 101 T.C. 374, 386 (1993),
affd. without published opinion 40 F.3d 385 (5th Cir. 1994);
Pollack v. Commissioner, 47 T.C. 92, 108 (1966), affd. 392 F.2d
409 (5th Cir. 1968); Wichita Terminal Elevator Co. v.
Commissioner, 6 T.C. 1158, 1165 (1946), affd. 162 F.2d 513 (10th
Cir. 1947); Sacks v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 1994-217, affd. 82
F.3d 918 (9th Cir. 1996).
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