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as well as the basis reductions associated with accelerated
depreciation for income tax purposes.
Petitioners’ opening brief says: “Under the facts in this
case, there is no reason to believe that any buyer of an interest
in the True companies would pay more than the book value price of
such interest”, preceded by a quote from Estate of Hall v.
Commissioner, 92 T.C. at 337, that “there was [not] even a remote
possibility that any investor, including a permitted transferee,
would purchase Hallmark shares at a price higher than adjusted
book value.” This is just not true in the cases at hand. There
were instances of sales of higher than book value for profit
sharing purposes and by unrelated parties. In any event, even
if, as could have been expected, all of the sales in the
transactions at issue between family members were at tax basis
book value in accordance with the provision in the buy-sell
agreements, there is no reason to believe, if the buy-sell
agreements are disregarded, as they must be as a result of our
testamentary device finding, that a hypothetical buyer would not
have been willing to pay higher prices than the tax basis book
values at which the subject interests changed hands between
members of the True family.
IV. Do True Family Buy-Sell Agreements Control Gift Tax Values?
We now consider whether the buy-sell agreements at issue in
these cases determine gift tax values for lifetime transfers of
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