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an 'invincible barrier' to the determination of tax liability."
Giddio v. Commissioner, supra at 1533.
In Palmer v. United States, 116 F.3d 1309, 1313 (9th Cir.
1997), the court found that the inference that taxpayers must
have had sufficient income to support themselves for years when
no income was reported, along with information linking one of the
taxpayers to wages for at least part of a 4-year period, was a
sufficient evidentiary foundation to establish the presumption of
correctness. We find the facts of this case to be similar to
those of Palmer v. United States, supra.
Additionally, the use of data compiled by the Bureau of
Labor Statistics is an acceptable and reasonable method of income
reconstruction.5 See Pollard v. Commissioner, 786 F.2d 1063, 1066
(11th Cir. 1986), affg. T.C. Memo. 1984-536; Burgo v.
Commissioner, 69 T.C. 729, 749 (1978); Cupp v. Commissioner, 65
T.C. 68 (1975), affd. without published opinion 559 F.2d 1207 (3d
Cir. 1977); Giddio v. Commissioner, supra at 1532.
While the presumption remains intact here, it creates only a
prima facie case placing the burden on petitioner to rebut the
5 The amounts determined as additional income in 1995 and
1996 in the notice of deficiency for petitioner were computed for
a single person with no children. Petitioner was married and had
two children over the age of 6. Respondent’s computations
understate by 64 percent the actual BLS figures for a person
supporting a family the size of petitioner’s.
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