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claim, as charitable contributions, 80 percent of the cost of
qualified religious services.
Petitioners contend that, because of that closing agreement,
the Commissioner is constitutionally required to allow a
deduction for tuition paid to schools that provide religious and
secular education to the extent that the tuition paid exceeds the
value of the secular education. Petitioners contend that the
religious education that the Jewish day schools provide in
exchange for tuition is jurisprudentially indistinguishable from
the auditing and training that the Church of Scientology provides
to its members in exchange for a fixed fee.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit previously
rejected petitioners’ arguments about the Church of Scientology
in Sklar v. Commissioner, 282 F.3d at 619-620. Petitioners’
tuition payments were made to schools that in part provide
secular educational services, not to exclusively religious
organizations. Thus, the analysis in United States v. Am. Bar
Endowment, 477 U.S. 105 (1986), controls here. We conclude that
the agreement reached between the Internal Revenue Service and
the Church of Scientology referred to in the letter sent to
petitioners in 1994 from respondent’s Fresno Service Center does
not affect the result in this case.16
16 In Sklar v. Commissioner, 282 F.3d 610, 612 n.3 (9th
Cir. 2002), affg. T.C. Memo. 2000-118, the U.S. Court of Appeals
(continued...)
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