Re: Has the Supreme Court defined what income is?


"Richard Macdonald" <rmacdonald@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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"Robert Miller" <rober999@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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I'm looking for the scientific definition for income, as in the income
tax.

I'm told on one side that it includes all monies a person earns, on the
other side I'm told that it is corp. profits, or both.

"The question is one of definition and the answer to it may be found in
recent decisions of this court.

The Corporation Excise Tax Act of August 5, 1909, c. 6, 36 Stat. 11, 112,
was not an income tax law, but a definition of the word "income" was so
necessary in its administration that in an early case it was formulated as
"the gain derived from capital, from labor, or from both combined."
Stratton's Independence v. Howbert, 231 U.S. 399, 415.

This definition, frequently approved by this court, received an addition,
in its latest income tax decision, which [*518] is especially
significant in its application to such a case as we have here, so that it
now reads: "'Income may be defined as the gain derived from capital, from
labor, or from both combined,' provided it be understood to include profit
gained through a sale or conversion of capital assets." Eisner v.
Macomber, 252 [***15] U.S. 189, 207."
-- Merchants' Loan & Trust Company, Trustee of Estate of Ryerson, v.
Smietanka, 255 U.S. 509. (1921)
This is what I've found so far, but it doesn't seem to apply for some reason
or
other.

"...Whatever difficulty there may be about a precise scientific definition
of 'income' it imports, as used here, something entirely distinct from
principal
or capital either as a subject of taxation or as a measure of the tax;
conveing
rather the idea of gain or increase arising from corporate acivities."
Doyle v. Mitchell Brothers Co., 247 U.S.179, 185, 38 S.Ct.467 (1918)

This is after the 1913 16th Amendemnt.






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