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stipulated decision. He explained that the settlement was a very
favorable one for petitioner, denied that petitioner was coerced
into the settlement, and testified that with respect to the
negotiation: “I was happy because * * * it seemed like we had
saved several thousand dollars.” He said: “I thought we’d done
a really good job.” While Mr. Ellsworth stated that petitioner
was in agreement with the favorable settlement he had negotiated
for her, he noted that she did not seem to understand fully the
taxation of her capital gains.1
Ms. Huss testified that her dealings with petitioner were
“professional” and strongly denied petitioner’s accusations that
she coerced and intimidated her into signing the stipulated
decision document. In response to petitioner’s accusatory
questions, Ms. Huss specifically denied ever threatening to have
petitioner thrown into jail or brought back into the courtroom by
security personnel against her will. Further, Ms. Huss made it
clear that she never has threatened a taxpayer with a jail
1 Mr. Ellsworth explained:
She had a hard time understanding the capital
gain law. She couldn’t understand how you
can be taxed on something when you don’t get
the cash. And I tried to explain it over and
over again that the cash is irrelevant in
calculating capital gains, it’s actually a
situation of basis versus sales price. And
we couldn’t establish basis over the numbers
that we talked about and that’s why we
settled for what we did.
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Last modified: May 25, 2011