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carrying on any trade or business”. Sec. 162(a); Deputy v.
duPont, 308 U.S. 488, 495 (1940).
Respondent did not challenge the validity of petitioners’
claimed Schedule C expenses as ordinary and necessary expenses
paid or incurred for Mr. Nwankwo’s trucking business but rather
disallowed the expenses on the grounds that petitioners failed to
provide substantiation that these expenses were actually paid or
incurred in the taxable years, and in the amounts, that they were
claimed.
With respect to the legal and professional fees, the record
contains evidence of two citations incurred by Mr. Nwankwo in
2002 as shown on payroll deduction forms provided by his
employer. The amounts of these citations were $105 and $1,105,
respectively. However, upon closer scrutiny of this evidence, we
find only one of the photocopied receipts provided by petitioner
to be legitimate,3 and accordingly, conclude that petitioner is
entitled to a deduction of $105. Petitioner then testified that
he incurred attorney’s fees of $400 associated with this
3The two photocopies provided are identical insofar as they
have the same claim accident number, date, and location
information. They appear to have been written by the same
person. There are two marked differences between the documents:
the document listing an amount of $105 appears to be a photocopy,
whereas the document showing $1,105 appears, at least on first
blush, to be an original. However, upon closer inspection, we
find that an extra “1” was likely added to the $105 copy and then
re-copied, whereupon the “original” $105 copy was either
distressed or re-faxed to give the appearance of two separate
receipts.
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