Talk:Clark v. Commissioner

Clark v. Commissioner stands for the proposition that when a tax advisor gives incorrect advice, he or she may reimburse the client for excessive taxes paid as a result of the advice, tax free. However, the legal standard upon which the court made its decision (namely construing income as "the gain derived from capital, from labor, or from both combined" as stated in Eisner v. Macomber) is no longer in use for analogous cases. Commissioner v. Glenshaw Glass Co. limited the scope of the Eisner analysis. In effect, the court, while not overturning Eisner, instead distinguished the analysis; "[Eisner] served a useful purpose... But it was not meant to provide a touchstone to all future gross income questions..." The court in Glenshaw inherently gave deference to Congress and provided a broad construction to section 61 of the Internal Revenue Code, in particular, the phrase, "gross income means all income from whatever source derived..." Still, Clark is not completely irrelevant. Private Letter Rulings, issued by the IRS, indicate that reimbursements by a tax advisor are not taxable if they compensate the client for paying more than the minimum amount of taxes that were due. So, while Clark v. Commissioner contains antiquated notions of the breadth of gross income, its progeny still has consequences today.

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