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prescribed by the Secretary. Without written records, a
deduction for charitable contributions generally is not allowed.
See sec. 1.170A-13, Income Tax Regs. In certain circumstances,
however, we have applied Cohan v. Commissioner, supra, to allow a
deduction even without written records where a taxpayer provides
a sufficient basis to estimate the amount of the contributions,
such as showing regular church attendance and regular cash
contributions thereto. See, e.g., Fontanilla v. Commissioner,
T.C. Memo. 1999-156; Meeks v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 1998-109,
affd. 208 F.3d 221 (9th Cir. 2000); Drake v. Commissioner, T.C.
Memo. 1997-487.
Petitioner presented no evidence corroborating the alleged
contributions. He testified that the relevant records were in
the possession of his former spouse, but he did not explain why
he was unable to obtain the records for trial. He attempted to
provide an estimate of a portion of these expenses by multiplying
an approximate number of times he attended Mass per year by his
average weekly contribution, but he was uncertain of even this
estimate. Because he failed to establish any regularity in
occurrence or extent of the donations from which we could
estimate an amount, or to present any reliable evidence
indicating he actually made these or other contributions, we
uphold respondent’s disallowance.
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