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time treated his writing activity as an active trade or business.
Although the taxpayer had no gross receipts from his writing
activities in 1993 or 1994, the Court concluded that he had
engaged in the conduct of a trade or business in 1993 and allowed
some of his deductions.6 We believe that Mr. Deward’s activities
can be distinguished from those of the taxpayer in Vitale.
At trial, petitioners introduced numerous documents in
support of Mr. Deward’s claimed expenses. Mr. Deward’s testimony
at trial indicated that the transcript he presented to his local
chapter of the “Great War Society” in September 2006 was the
first material he had written with the intention of including it
in the book. Mr. Deward conceded that those materials were
written in the summer of 2006. He also testified that he
received no gross receipts from the trade or business of writing
books between 1997 and 2005. Mr. Deward presented no evidence
establishing that he approached a publisher before receiving the
letter from Military History Press L.L.C. in August 2005.
Evidence of written materials that could potentially be
included in a book and of communication with a publisher may
indicate that Mr. Deward is interested in writing and publishing
a book sometime in the future. However, these events occurred
6 Some of the taxpayer’s deductions were disallowed for
reasons not relevant to the instant case. Vitale v.
Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 1999-131, affd. without published
opinion 217 F.3d 843 (4th Cir. 2000).
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Last modified: November 10, 2007