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Commissioner, 142 F.2d 746 (3d Cir. 1944), affg. 40 B.T.A. 664
(1939); Monjar v. Commissioner, 140 F.2d 263 (2d Cir. 1944),
affg. an unreported Order of the Board of Tax Appeals; Denholm &
McKay Co. v. Commissioner, 132 F.2d 243 (1st Cir. 1942), vacating
41 B.T.A. 986 (1940) and reinstating 39 B.T.A. 767 (1939); see
also Helvering v. Northern Coal Co., 293 U.S. 191 (1934).
These prior cases do not address the current status of this
Court as a court of law that performs exclusively judicial
functions. None of these cases, therefore, has any bearing on
the types of powers that this Court is authorized to exercise in
performing our judicial functions. The Supreme Court
acknowledged so much in Freytag when the Court held that Congress
constitutionally established the United States Tax Court as a
court of law that "[exercises] judicial power and perform[s]
exclusively judicial functions" and, in so holding, rejected the
Commissioner's argument that the 1969 Act "simply changed the
status of the Tax Court within * * * [the executive] branch."
Freytag v. Commissioner, supra at 885, 892. It naturally follows
from Congress' elevation of this Court to an "exclusively
judicial" court that this Court possesses all of the inherent
powers of the judiciary and that this Court's legal and equitable
powers are diametrically different from this Court's executive
agency predecessors which wielded executive powers only.
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