Forbes Top 10 Tax Court Cases, 2012

[Prof]

For those of you who delve into these depths:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonynitt ... n-already/

[Burnaby49]

Thanks, I found the concept of burning your house down as a charitable donation very interesting. The court hit the nail on the head about the value of the donation with the comment;

When a gift is made with conditions, the conditions must be taken into account in determining the fair market value of the donated property…proper consideration of the economic effect of the condition that the house be destroyed reduces the fair market value of the gift so much that no net value is ever likely to be available for a deduction, and certainly not here. What is the fair market value of a house, severed from the land, and donated on the condition that it soon be burned down? There is no evidence of a functional market of willing sellers and buyers of houses to burn.

[Number Six]

I went to the Forbes article but first had to see a presentation from "Capital One" which uses the Viking theme apparently to show how much power you have with their plastic.

For me the criteria for the top ten cases would be pervasiveness of that tax strategy and the extent of political ramifications of those cases; amount of money involved; the approximate dollar value expended in government resources to interdict the fraud. Post mortem exercises are also interesting; how the fraud could have been nipped in the bud and who dropped the ball in doing so?