Alexander Firsow and Camilla Thomas-Firsow, a.k.a. Camilla Thomas - Page 9

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               To establish the amount of time petitioners spent on their             
          rental real estate activities in the present case, petitioners              
          introduced a spreadsheet and a daily work log summarizing the               
          work activities they performed on a daily basis for the Sanibel             
          property and Port Deposit Property.  The daily work log was not             
          prepared contemporaneously as petitioners performed each                    
          activity, but it was composed by petitioners in preparation for             
          an examination of their returns by respondent.  The spreadsheet             
          lists the following hours spent by petitioners at their rental              
          properties:                                                                 
               Year   Port Deposit property  Sanibel property   Total                 
               1999           283                 606            889                  
               2000           311                 494            805                  
          Petitioner testified that he worked 12 hours per day whenever he            
          was at the Sanibel property.  The spreadsheet also lists                    
          petitioners’ time spent rendering personal services for their own           
          residence and for the properties owned by petitioner’s parents.             
               Petitioners have not met their burden of proving that they             
          were in the real property trade or business and that their rental           
          real estate activity is not a passive activity for the 1999 and             
          2000 taxable years.  While petitioners did not file their                   
          election to aggregate activities with their joint returns for               
          1999 and 2000, we need not decide whether we should look at the             
          total number of hours during each of these taxable years such               
          that petitioners spent 889 hours in 1999 and 805 hours in 2000.             





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