- 22 -
and $5,000 of Melinda Doxtator's money. For reasons that are not
clear, Mr. Doxtator contended that this arrangement resulted in
petitioners' having a 40-percent share of any gain, but then
persisted in claiming that "any gain went to her [Melinda
Doxtator]". On brief, petitioners contended for a different
version of the arrangement; namely, that the money for the
investment in the stocks was 28 percent from petitioners' funds,
14 percent from a friend (Pearl McLester, mentioned for the first
time on brief), and 71 percent from Melinda Doxtator.15 As was
true of the first version, petitioners offer no explanation
concerning why, if they contributed a share of the invested
funds, no portion of the gain was theirs. Although Mr. Doxtator
testified that all gains in 1999 were paid over to Melinda
Doxtator, he offered no evidence to corroborate this contention.
We are not required to accept Mr. Doxtator's uncorroborated,
self-serving testimony, and we do not. See Niedringhaus v.
Commissioner, 99 T.C. 202, 212 (1992); Tokarski v. Commissioner,
87 T.C. 74, 77 (1986). Second, petitioners' varying positions
regarding the source of the investment funds may reflect the fact
that their claim that Melinda Doxtator's $5,000 contribution
entitled her to "most" or "all" of the resulting gain cannot be
15 Aside from the facial contradiction in this later version
of the allocation (the portions of which total 113 percent),
unsupported statements in a brief do not constitute competent
evidence. Rule 143(b); Niedringhaus v. Commissioner, 99 T.C.
202, 214 n.7 (1992); Viehweg v. Commissioner, 90 T.C. 1248, 1255
(1988); Castro v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 2001-115.
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