Bernard J. Penn and Thelma I. Penn - Page 6




                                        - 6 -                                         
          Florida or its political subdivisions.  Hernandez v.                        
          Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 1998-46, supplemented by T.C. Memo.                
          1998-329; Barrow v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 1983-123.  The                 
          Florida statutes under which the tax certificates at issue in               
          this case were issued and redeemed have undergone no material               
          change since they were analyzed for purposes of section 103 in              
          the foregoing opinions.5  Under the reasoning outlined in                   
          Hernandez and Barrow, which we need not repeat here, we hold that           
          the interest income petitioners received upon the redemption of             
          the Florida tax certificates they held is not excluded from gross           
          income by section 103.  Accordingly, we sustain respondent’s                
          determination that petitioners must include $28,136 of taxable              
          interest in their gross income for 1996.                                    
               Petitioners offered no evidence to refute respondent’s                 
          determination that they received taxable interest income in the             


               5 Our analysis in Barrow v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 1983-             
          123, focused on the nature of the obligations that existed                  
          between a tax certificate’s purchaser, the property’s owner, and            
          the tax collector under Florida law.  Specifically, we looked at            
          secs. 197.116 and 197.156 of the Florida Statutes governing the             
          issuance and redemption of tax certificates, and sec. 197.241 of            
          the Florida Statutes governing a certificate holder’s right to              
          convert the certificate into a tax deed.                                    
               In the period between our opinions in Barrow and Hernandez             
          v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 1998-46, supplemented by T.C. Memo.             
          1998-329, secs. 197.116, 197.156, and 197.241 of the Florida                
          Statutes were repealed and replaced by secs. 197.432, 197.472,              
          and 197.502, respectively.  The substance of these provisions,              
          however, has not changed in any material manner since they were             
          first analyzed in Barrow or revisited in Hernandez.                         





Page:  Previous  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10  11  12  Next

Last modified: May 25, 2011