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Richard Hansen Land, Inc. v. Commissioner, supra, like
Gordon v. Commissioner, 85 T.C. 309 (1985), and Kornfeld v.
Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 1996-472, involved the simultaneous
joint acquisition of term and remainder interests in property
acquired from a third party. However, we held in Richard Hansen
Land, Inc. v. Commissioner, supra, unlike the other two cases,
that the taxpayer did not use Mr. Hansen as a "mere stopping
place" for the funds used to make the acquisitions. Rather,
Mr. Hansen acquired his remainder interest entirely out of his
own earnings——by drawing on his personal bank account to make the
purchase. Although a portion of that amount constituted the
proceeds of selling the wheat he had received as wages, it was
more important that such wages were due and owing to Mr. Hansen
and separate, in our view, from the joint purchase that followed.
The taxpayer had an obligation to pay Mr. Hansen for his work in
the taxpayer's farming and ranching business, a point which the
Commissioner had conceded, regardless of whether Mr. Hansen chose
to participate in a joint asset purchase. As we noted in our
opinion: "Mr. Hansen rendered services to * * * [the taxpayer],
and there is nothing in the record that would indicate that the
transfer of wheat by * * * [the taxpayer] to Mr. Hansen repre-
sented anything other than wages." Id. The acquisitions of the
term and remainder interests by, respectively, the corporation
and Mr. Hansen, its sole shareholder, "'were in fact what they
appear to be in form.'" Id. (quoting Hobby v. Commissioner, 2
T.C. 980, 985 (1943)).
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