Holywell Corp. v. Smith, 503 U.S. 47, 11 (1992)

Page:   Index   Previous  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10  11  12  13  Next

Cite as: 503 U. S. 47 (1992)

Opinion of the Court

come is . . . applied in discharge of a legal obligation of the grantor." 26 CFR § 1.667(a)-1(d) (1991). They assert that Gould is the grantor of the liquidating trust and that, under this regulation, he owns the trust's income and must pay taxes on it. To support this position, the respondents cite In re Sonner, 53 B. R. 859 (ED Va. 1985), which applied the grantor trust provisions to a postconfirmation liquidating trust.

While we express no opinion on the results in Sonner, the facts are distinguishable. In Sonner, the property of the bankruptcy estate by the terms of the plan appears to have revested in the debtor upon confirmation. The debtor pursuant to a plan then placed some of this property in a trust created to pay his creditors. Under these circumstances, the Bankruptcy Court concluded, the debtor had created a grantor trust under Treasury Regulation § 1.677(a)-1(d). See Sonner, supra, at 860, 864. In this case, however, the property of Gould's bankruptcy estate did not revest in Gould. The plan, instead, placed all of the estate's property directly in the Miami Center Liquidating Trust. Gould himself did not contribute anything to the trust, and we thus fail to see how the respondents can characterize him as the grantor.

Second, the respondents argue that the trustee did not act as a fiduciary because he had almost no discretion in performing his duties under the plan. They assert that the trustee merely acted as a "disbursing agent" who distributed liquidated funds to the creditors. As the dissenting judge noted below, labels and characterizations cannot alter the trustee's status for the purpose of the tax law. 911 F. 2d, at 1547. Because the liquidating trust is a trust under the Internal Revenue Code and because respondent Smith's duties under the plan satisfy the description of a fiduciary in

57

Page:   Index   Previous  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10  11  12  13  Next

Last modified: October 4, 2007