190
Stevens, J., dissenting
latter alternative entirely superfluous. Moreover, it sets the three subsections on unequal footing: Subsection (A) will rarely apply unless it includes subsection (B); subsection (B) is preeminent; and the logic of the Court's analysis would allow a future court to discover that, under subsection (C), a separate structure is not truly "separate" (as a principal place of business is not truly "principal") unless it is also the site of meetings with patients or clients.
The meaning of "principal place of business" may not be absolutely clear, but it is absolutely clear that a taxpayer may deduct costs associated with his home office if it is his principal place of business or if it is a place of business used by patients in the normal course of his business or if it is located in a separate structure used in connection with his business. A home office could, of course, satisfy all three requirements, but to suggest that it need always satisfy subsection (B), or even that whether it satisfies (B) has anything to do with whether it satisfies (A), encourages the misapplication of a relatively simple provision of the Revenue Code.
By conflating subsections (A) and (B) the Court makes the same mistake the Courts of Appeals refused to make when they rejected the Tax Court's "focal point" test, which proved both unworkable and unfaithful to the statute.12 In
this case the Tax Court itself rejected that test because it "merges the 'principal place of business' exception with the 'meeting clients' exception . . . from section 280A." 94 T. C. 20, 25 (1990). The Court today steps blithely into territory in which several Courts of Appeals and the Tax Court, whose experience in these matters is much greater than ours, have
12 See Meiers v. Commissioner, 782 F. 2d 75 (CA7 1986), rev'g 53 TCM 2475 (1984), ¶ 84,607 P-H Memo TC; Weissman v. Commissioner, 751 F. 2d 512 (CA2 1984); Drucker v. Commissioner, 715 F. 2d 67 (CA2 1983), rev'g 79 T. C. 605 (1982); see also Note, Home Office Deductions: Deserving Taxpayers Finally Get a Break, 45 Tax Law. 247, 251-254 (1991); Sommer, I. R. C. Section 280A: The Status of the Home Office Deduction—A Call to Congress to Get the House in Order, 16 So. Ill. U. L. J. 501, 519-522 (1992).
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