- 13 -
Commissioner, 32 T.C. 947, 953 (1959), affd. per curiam 283 F.2d
865 (5th Cir. 1960), and we acknowledge that petitioner may very
well have, and probably did on occasion, leave work and drive
directly to a tutoring client’s home for a lesson. But the crux
of the matter is that petitioner’s log does not permit us to make
the requisite evaluation without supposition, conjecture, and
surmise, for the log (among its other infirmities) does not
identify a single client but merely lists towns (e.g., Silver
Spring) in the Maryland suburbs of metropolitan Washington, D.C.7
Because commuting is nondeductible as a matter of law, and
further because petitioner’s so-called log does not satisfy the
strict substantiation requirements of section 274(d) and section
1.274-5T(a), Temporary Income Tax Regs., 50 Fed. Reg. 46014 (Nov.
6, 1985), we are constrained to sustain respondent’s disallowance
of petitioner’s deduction for vehicle expense.
D. Conclusion
In order to reflect our disposition of the disputed issues,
Decision will be entered
under Rule 155.
7 Further by way of example, the very first entry in
petitioner’s log is shown simply as “Laurel 6 Germantown 6 Silver
Spring”. Laurel, Md. is petitioner’s home; Germantown, Md. is
the business address of Hughes Network Systems, Inc.
(petitioner’s employer), and Silver Spring is a community along
petitioner’s Beltway commute. Petitioner ascribes 90 miles to
this entry, all of which is presumably business-related in his
mind.
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