- 10 - ascertained from surrounding facts and circumstances. Id.; sec. 1.274-5(c)(2)(ii)(B), Income Tax Regs. In the instant case, petitioner did not produce any records for travel taken during 1993. Rather, petitioner testified that all of her records for 1993 were destroyed in the Flint River flood on July 7, 1994. Section 1.274-5T(c)(5), Temporary Income Tax Regs., provides a limited exception to the heightened substantiation requirement under section 274(d): Where the taxpayer establishes that the failure to produce adequate records is due to the loss of such records through circumstances beyond the taxpayer's control, such as destruction by fire, flood, earthquake, or other casualty, the taxpayer shall have a right to substantiate a deduction by reasonable reconstruction of his expenditures or use. Taxpayers whose records are lost due to casualty must reasonably reconstruct them to gain the benefits of the deduction. Gizzi v. Commissioner, 65 T.C. 342, 345-346 (1975). In the instant case, although petitioner has shown that her records were lost in the Flint River flood, she made no attempt to reconstruct those records for 1993. Consequently, the record contains no basis on which the Court can allow a deduction for 1993 beyond the amounts respondent has allowed. As to 1994, petitioner has submitted 11 months of expense sheets detailing dates, destinations, mileage driven, and, in most cases, the purpose of the trip by petitioner during such period. We conclude that the expense sheets, together with petitioner's testimony at trial, sufficiently substantiatePage: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Next
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