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they can provide for highly compensated individuals, such as
physicians and lawyers,6 with petitioner’s reminder that the
Court has more recently recognized that highly compensated self-
employed individuals are entitled to use such plans, including
properly structured defined benefit plans, to shelter their
earned income and provide for retirement within the limits
established by Congress. See Vinson & Elkins v. Commissioner, 99
T.C. 9 (1992). Petitioner couples her reminder with the argument
that, as a victim of invidious discrimination that prevented her
from achieving an independent contractor relationship in the
insurance industry, she should be allowed to treat her
compensatory recovery as self-employment income and thereby
shelter a portion of the recovery by making deductible
contributions to her qualified plan. Cf. Sager & Cohen, “How the
6 See Staff of the Joint Comm. on Taxation, General
Explanation of the Revenue Provisions of the Tax Equity and
Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982, at 301-308 (J. Comm. Print
1982), setting forth the various restrictions in prior statutory
law on qualified plans for the self-employed. See also Bittker &
Lokken, Federal Taxation of Income, Estates and Gifts S90-4-S90-5
(Cum. Supp. No. 2, 2000) for a brief summary, with citations to
relevant authorities, of the Commissioner’s efforts to limit the
use by the erstwhile self-employed of professional corporations
as vehicles to obtain the tax benefits of qualified pension and
profit-sharing plans.
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