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Petitioner cannot avoid taxation of her annuity payments
merely because Boeing administrative personnel apparently
mistakenly listed Mr. Whittaker’s SSN rather than petitioner’s
SSN on documents relating to payments made to her after Mr.
Whittaker’s death. The sweep of section 61 is very broad. Gross
income includes “instances of undeniable accessions to wealth,
clearly realized, and over which the taxpayers have complete
dominion.” Commissioner v. Glenshaw Glass Co., 348 U.S. 426, 431
(1955). Petitioner was entitled to the annuity payments at
issue, and they were properly deposited to a bank account under
her control. Petitioner has not shown that the annuity payments
fall within any provision of the Code or of other law exempting
or excluding them from gross income.
The bank account into which the funds were deposited appears
to be a so-called Totten trust account; that is, an account
belonging to the depositor with a beneficiary designated to
succeed to the funds only in the event of the depositor’s death.
See Funk v. Funk, 598 P.2d 792, 794-795 (Wash. Ct. App. 1979).3
3 In Funk v. Funk, 598 P.2d 792, 794 (Wash. Ct. App. 1979),
the Washington Court of Appeals stated:
The doctrine of tentative trusts emerged from the oft-
quoted case of In Re Totten, 179 N.Y. 112, 125, 71 N.E.
748, 752 (1904), cited with approval in In Re Madsen’s
Estate, 48 Wash.2d 675, 678-79, 296 P.2d 518 (1956):
“A deposit by one person of his own money, in his own
name as trustee for another, standing alone, does not
(continued...)
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