- 105 -
based upon our perception that charging Mr. Thompson with fraud
in these circumstances would attribute to Mr. Thompson
substantially more knowledge of tax law than he ever had. When
his 1982 tax return was filed, Mr. Thompson was a retired airline
pilot, who, like more than 1,000 of his colleagues duped by
Kersting, unwisely bought into a spurious tax shelter.
Petitioners apparently would have us accept the proposition that
Mr. Thompson was familiar with the laws governing the deduction
of interest payments where there is some question whether the
taxpayer involved is personally at risk.
This Court had substantial opportunity to evaluate the
credibility of Mr. Thompson, who testified for 2 days during the
evidentiary hearing mandated by DuFresne. We found no basis for
suspecting him of fraud; to the contrary, if he had engaged in
fraud, we doubt he would have admitted that he didn’t think he
was personally at risk on the Kersting notes. Instead, we
concluded that his testimony at the test case trial “was
truthful.”
More to the point, we believe Mr. Thompson’s true beliefs
are those shown by his letter to McWade dated November 6, 1989.
In this letter, Mr. Thompson expressed his anger and confusion at
the part he had been made to play by the machinations of DeCastro
and McWade:
I received a check from IRS in the amount of thirty
thousand dollars--($30,000). I endorsed this over to
Page: Previous 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 NextLast modified: May 25, 2011