- 14 -
or that such an application “‘would thwart the purpose of the
overall statutory scheme or lead to an absurd or futile result.’”
Booth v. Commissioner, 108 T.C. 524, 568, 569 (1997) (quoting
Garcia v. United States, 469 U.S. 70, 76 n.3 (1984), and
Albertson’s, Inc. v. Commissioner, 42 F.3d 537, 545 (9th Cir.
1994), affg. 95 T.C. 415 (1990)); see United States v. Am.
Trucking Associations, Inc., supra at 543; see also United States
v. Shriver, 989 F.2d 898, 901 (7th Cir. 1992); Allen v.
Commissioner, 118 T.C. 1 (2002).
The applicable text refers to “the taxpayer’s average
adjusted [bases] * * * of [tax-exempt] obligations” and the
“average adjusted bases for all assets of the taxpayer”. We read
that text to refer to the tax-exempt obligations and assets owned
by Peoples alone or, in other words, by the “taxpayer” for whom
the subject calculation is performed. We do not read that text
to provide that a taxpayer such as Peoples must include in its
tax-exempt obligations any tax-exempt obligation purchased and
owned by another taxpayer, whether the taxpayers be related or
not. Cf. First Chicago NBD Corp. v. Commissioner, 135 F.3d 457
(7th Cir. 1998) (holding that section 902 did not allow
aggregation where the statute referred literally to “a”
corporation rather than to a group of affiliated corporations),
affg. 96 T.C. 421 (1991). We understand Congress to have enacted
the text as a means for raising revenue and bolstering equity in
Page: Previous 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 Next
Last modified: March 27, 2008