George and Bozenna Pohoski - Page 17

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               Despite our concluding, supra, that petitioners satisfied              
          their intitial burden of proof, we find several problems with               
          petitioners' claim of time spent participating in the rental of             
          their Hawaiian condominiums.  Cf. Harrison v. Commissioner, supra.          
          First, petitioners' claim of 150 hours of work during their                 
          Hawaiian "working vacation" is implausible.  Assuming petitioners           
          actually stayed for 14 days, their claim would amount to an average         
          of 10.7 hours of work per day, which was apparently performed only          
          by Mr. Pohoski because no testimony presented ever referred to work         
          performed by Mrs. Pohoski while in Hawaii.  Yet there was never any         
          discussion of breaks for meals, travel, or leisure time with the            
          family--all of which certainly occurred.                                    
               Second, the breakdown of time spent on telephone calls from            
          prospective tenants, travel agent contacts, and e-mail responses to         
          prospective tenants is suspicious.  Petitioners allocate the total          
          time evenly between the Maui and Molokai condos, yet they clearly           
          had much more success in renting the Maui condo than the  Molokai           
          condo.  We find it unlikely that an equal amount of time was spent          
          with regard to each condominium, and we find that less time was             
          spent with respect to the Molokai condo.                                    
               Third, we find the time spent with respect to checking and             
          responding to e-mail excessive.  Mr. Pohoski's testimony suggested          
          many more telephone calls than e-mail responses, yet much more time         
          was allocated to checking and responding to his e-mail than calling         





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