Definition of Income

[Lawdog]

Originally Posted by joseph sugarman

Lawdog,

There are some statements you have made in this thread, and there is some case law you have provided with which I agree.

There are some statements you have made in this thread, and there is some case law you have provided with which I disagree. Now I recognize that could be just because you have only been able to post one headnote from a case. That headnote may not have been clearly dispositive of the decision.

Perhaps I will have something to add regarding the above at a later date based on your response to that which follows.

You can settle it all for me with just one other case law cite. Please supply any Supreme Court decision, dealing with one human person, or at most a married couple, who have advanced the theory the definition of income, defined correctly in a series of cases involving corporations, does not apply to him, her or them; and the finding by the Supreme Court it does.

Thank you for your time and effort.

You must have missed this part of the above case citations:

In particular, in Southern Pacific Co. v,. Lowe, 247 U.S. 330, 333-34 (1918), the Supreme Court quoted the income statute at the time as imposing a tax on “every person residing in the United States . . . upon the entire net income arising and accruing from all sources”.

Consider these statements by the United States Supreme Court:

“[T]he earnings of the human brain and hand when unaided by capital ... are commonly dealt with as income in legislation.”
Stratton’s Independence, Ltd. v. Howbert, 231 U.S. 399, 415 (1913).

“There is no doubt that the statute could tax salaries to those who earned them....”
Lucas v. Earl, 281 U.S. 111, 114 (1930).

“[The tax code] is broad enough to include in taxable income any economic or financial benefit conferred on the employee as compensation, whatever the form or mode by which it is effected.”
C.I.R. v. Smith, 324 U.S. 177 (1945).

“Wages usually are income ....”
Central Illinois Public Serv. Co. v. United States, 435 U.S. 21, 25 (1978).

“[T]he premise that personal injury awards cannot involve gain is obviously false, since they often are intended in significant part to compensate for the loss of gain, e. g., lost wages. (Citation omitted.) Since the gain would have been income, surely at least that part of a personal injury award that replaces it must also be income.”
Lukhard v. Reed, 481 U.S. 368, 375 (1987), (plurality opinion of Justice Scalia, joined by Rehnquist, White, and Stevens, Blackmun concurring in the result; footnote omitted).

“The definition of gross income under the Internal Revenue Code sweeps broadly. Section 61(a), 26 U.S.C. 61(a), provides that ‘gross income means all income from whatever source derived,’ subject only to the exclusions specifically enumerated elsewhere in the Code. As this Court has recognized, Congress intended, through 61(a) and its statutory precursors, to exert ‘the full measure of its taxing power,’ [citation omitted] and to bring within the definition of income any ‘accessio[n] to wealth.’ [citation omitted] There is no dispute that the settlement awards in this case [for ‘back wages’ to compensate for sex discrimination] would constitute gross income within the reach of 61(a).”
United States v. Burke, 504 U.S. 229, 233 (1992). Later in the same opinion, the Supreme Court referred to the compensation received by the taxpayers as “the wages properly due them - wages that, if paid in the ordinary course, would have been fully taxable.” 504 U.S. at 241.

“It [I.R.C. section 104, relating to compensation for personal injuries] also excludes from taxation those damages that substitute, say, for lost wages, which would have been taxed had the victim earned them.”
O’Gilvie v. United States, 519 U.S. 79 (1996).

“Even if we suppose that strike benefits are made to compensate in a sense for the loss of wages, the principle of payments in compensation does not apply because the thing compensated for, the wages, had they been received, would have been included in gross income.”
United States v. Kaiser, 363 U.S. 299, 311 (1960).

[Lawdog]

Originally Posted by farmer_giles_of_ham

It loses because wages are items of corporate profit.

Huh?

Black's Law Dictionary, wages:

A compensation given to a hired person for his or her services. Compensation of employees based on time worked or output of production.
Every form of remuneration payable for a given period to an individual for personal services, including salaries, commissions, vacation pay, dismissal wages, bonuses and reasonable value of board, rent, housing, lodging, payments in kind, tips, and any other similar advantage received from the individual's employer or directly with respect to work for him. Ernst v. Industrial Commission, 246 Wis. 205, 16 N.W.2d 867. Term should be broadly defined and includes not only periodic monetary earnings but all compensation for services rendered without regard to manner in which such compensation is computed. Ware v. Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith, Inc., 24 Cal.App.3d 35, 100 Cal. Rptr. 791, 797.

Wages paid to employees are an expense of the corporation, not a type of corporate profit.

[joseph sugarman]

lawdog,

Apparently you missed the part of my request which specified a case with only a human person or a married couple, not a corporation.

[FreeFromContract]

Originally Posted by Lawdog

Oh yes. If you consider quoting the decisions of the courts to be distortion, opinion, and misdirection.

Save yourself from embarrassment. Administrative courts are illicit as judicial venues and only a fool such as yourself would rely on such rulings and portray them in the same light as SC rulings.

Prove where the rulings Smith provided concerning income have been overturned and you might have something.

Address, directly, joseph sugarman's point and you might have something.

Until then, you're nothing more than a Lapdog.

[farmer_giles_of_ham]

Lawdog:

Wages paid to employees are an expense of the corporation, not a type of corporate profit.

depends which corporation. One corporation's expenses are wages- another corporation's wages are profits.

I use the term "corporate" loosely, but correctly: the "individual" is a kind of 'corporate sole'. Blacks has it that an individual is

"an indivisible entity w/ a legal identity seperate from its owner, like a govt or business organization"

Apparently profits and gains are considered to go together with legal status. Gotta have one to get the other.

Wages are an item of gross income, which is the raw total of all proceeds from the venture, in whatever form.

[Gray]

Originally Posted by Lawdog

The argument that federal income tax applies only to corporate profits is a 100% loser argument.

key word - what is a federal?

as in noun. that might help you to understand.

[farmer_giles_of_ham]

heres a fallacy from a website supposedly debunking fallacies:

If you go into your back yard and work for a week taking clay and making pots, there is no income and no tax. However, if you sell your pots, you have income because you have taken in money, and have more money than you had before. Similarly, if you “sell your labor” by agreeing to work in someone else’s factory (or farm) for a week, you have sold your labor and the compensation you receive is taxable.

If I sell my pots as in the above example, I also lose the pots, and the associated value. If they were damaged by someone I could sue for their value, if they were stolen criminal charges based on that value would be in order.

So the statement:

if you sell your pots, you have income because you have taken in money, and have more money than you had before

is utterly false. I have no more value, or money, than I had before- I have both gained AND lost the price of the pots- I haven't got my pots now, have I? All I have now is something that replaced them, the selling price. An even exchange.

Now a different story would be where I somehow operated a franchise, and had to report all sales ("gross income") to my partner, and then talk about deductions for expenses, and finally pay a % to that person. That would be a calculation device, not a natural logic based on value.

But that takes a prior understanding, and just goes to show that "all sources derived" must have some special character to be included.

Which we are openly told over and again- "income from a trade or business within the United States". Which by nature excludes the even exchange, or payment for loss, or loans, credits, debits and re-payment.

There has to be something special about the activity for it count this way, "gross income"

[Lawdog]

Originally Posted by joseph sugarman

lawdog,

Apparently you missed the part of my request which specified a case with only a human person or a married couple, not a corporation.

Several of the cases deal with humans, not corporations. Go look them up.

[Lawdog]

Originally Posted by FreeFromContract

Save yourself from embarrassment. Administrative courts are illicit as judicial venues and only a fool such as yourself would rely on such rulings and portray them in the same light as SC rulings.

Prove where the rulings Smith provided concerning income have been overturned and you might have something.

Address, directly, joseph sugarman's point and you might have something.

Until then, you're nothing more than a Lapdog.

Many of the court decisions I have cited ARE Supreme Court rulings. Anything with the citation format XXX U.S. XXX is a Supreme Court ruling. Work on those reading skills.

As for the rest, asked and answered.

[FreeFromContract]

Originally Posted by Lawdog

Many of the court decisions I have cited ARE Supreme Court rulings. Anything with the citation format XXX U.S. XXX is a Supreme Court ruling. Work on those reading skills.

Ha-Ha...please! All the cites are from lower courts, administrative courts or a SC cite concerning corporations - so you lose on all points.

But lets dig deeper into your misapplication:

Originally Posted by lawdog

“[T]he earnings of the human brain and hand when unaided by capital ... are commonly dealt with as income in legislation.”
Stratton’s Independence, Ltd. v. Howbert, 231 U.S. 399, 415 (1913).

The entire section of that decision which you quoted reads:

The very process of mining is, in a sense, equivalent in its results to a manufacturing process. And, however the operation shall be described, the transaction is indubitably "business" within the fair meaning of the Act of 1909, and the gains derived from it are properly and strictly the income from that business; for "income" may be defined as the gain derived from capital, from labor, or from both combined, and here we have combined operations of capital and labor. As to the alleged inequality of operation between mining corporations and others, it is, of course, true that the revenues derived from the working of mines result to some extent in the exhaustion of the capital. But the same is true of the earnings of the human brain and hand when unaided by capital, yet such earnings are commonly dealt with in legislation as income. So it may be said of many manufacturing corporations that are clearly subject to the Act of 1909, especially of those that have to do with the production of patented articles; although it may be foretold from the beginning that the manufacture will be profitable only for a limited time at the end of which the capital value of the plant must be subject to material depletion, the annual gains of such corporations are certainly to be taken as income for the purpose of measuring the amount of the tax.

It seems to us that the first two questions certified must be answered in the affirmative principally for two reasons. First, because mining corporations are within the general description of § 38, which comprises
"every corporation, joint stock company, or association organized for profit, and having a capital stock represented by shares, . . . and engaged in business in any state or territory of the United States,"
and, secondly, because the act specifies those classes of corporations that are to be exempt from its operation, and mining corporations are not among them. Those exempted are labor, agricultural, or horticultural organizations, fraternal beneficiary societies, orders or associations operating under the lodge system, domestic building and loan associations, corporations and associations organized and operated for religious, charitable, or educational purposes, etc. Moreover, the section imposes "a special excise tax with respect to the carrying on or doing business by such corporation," etc. That mining companies are doing business within the fair intent and meaning of this clause seems to us entirely plain for reasons already given. The conduct of such business results in profit, for it cannot be seriously contended that the ores are not worth more at the mine mouth than they were worth in the ground plus the cost of mining. Corporations engaged in such business share in the benefits of the federal government, and ought as reasonably to contribute to the support of that government as corporations that conduct other kinds of profitable business.

I would think that even you would be able to figure out the area of legislation being identified here is privileged business' and only that of § 38 as identified. Apparently you didn't take the time to read entire text (to help you out, check the bold and underlined text).

It's easy for most to see the cite you provided is narrowly limited in it's application and expanding it outside the realm of non-corporate applications removes the income from being an excise on a privileged activity.

As usual, you provide nothing more than misinformation.

Originally Posted by lawdog

As for the rest, asked and answered.

Nope, not even close.