- 9 -
affd. 445 F.2d 985 (10th Cir. 1971), in cases appealable to the
Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit or other circuits which
have adopted Danielson. Since the Court of Appeals for the Tenth
Circuit, to which this case is appealable absent stipulation to
the contrary, has not explicitly adopted Danielson, we decline to
apply that standard here.5
In this case, one, namely petitioner Benavidez, of two
competing petitioners and respondent both seek to ignore the
transactional form. We have observed that “the taxpayer may have
less freedom than the Commissioner to ignore the transactional
form that he has adopted.” Bolger v. Commissioner, 59 T.C. 760,
767 n.4 (1973); Coleman v. Commissioner, supra at 202. The
strong proof doctrine, however, is not applied to the
Government’s attack on the form of a transaction. The present
case is a consolidated proceeding, and each petitioner is
litigating against the Government. Because the form of the
transaction in this case is being attacked by the Government, and
because both the “lessor” and “lessee” are parties to this
proceeding, the strong proof doctrine is not applicable. Cf.
5 The Guaderramas cite Munroe v. Commissioner, 961 F.2d 220
(10th Cir. 1992), as standing for the proposition that the Court
of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit has adopted Commissioner v.
Danielson, supra. Munroe, however, simply references Danielson
in a string citation and does not explicitly adopt the standard
enunciated in Danielson. Further, Munroe is an unpublished order
of the Court of Appeals which specifically states that it has no
precedential value. Thus, we do not read Munroe as adopting
Danielson.
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Next
Last modified: May 25, 2011