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Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 1994-432, application of the common-law
employment factors resulted in findings that an ordained minister
holding credentials in the Assemblies of God Church and a
minister of the International Pentecostal Holiness Church,
respectively, were not employees of their respective religious
organizations.
The facts of the instant case are materially distinguishable
from the facts in Beech Trucking Co. The Court in Beech Trucking
Co. v. Commissioner, 118 T.C. at 441, 442 n.16, concluded:
In the instant case, the evidentiary basis for
analyzing the relevant common law factors is relatively
sparse, owing largely to petitioner’s [Arthur Beech,
the tax matters person for Beech Trucking Company]
failure to introduce in evidence or otherwise establish
the precise terms of any lease agreement, employment
agreement, or contract between Beech Trucking and ATS
[driver-leasing company]. Nor does the record contain
the drivers’ employment contracts. Moreover, the
record does not always clearly distinguish the roles of
Beech Trucking and ATS with respect to the drivers’
activities. We infer that their roles were to some
degree blurred, especially taking into consideration
that [Ed] Harvey, who owned [alone] ATS, also owned 26
percent of Beech Trucking, and that petitioner, who was
president and 55-percent owner of Beech Trucking, was
an employee of ATS.
* * * * * * *
Most of the pertinent testimony regarding the
Beech Trucking drivers’ activities came from
petitioner. As previously noted, petitioner was both
president of Beech Trucking and an employee of ATS
* * * [and] his testimony often employed, ambiguously,
first-person plural pronouns. * * *
The Court also concluded in Beech Trucking Co. that the record
was “unclear as to the extent of any business ATS might have had
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