Talk:Commissioner v. Glenshaw Glass Co.

	This article is part of WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court cases, a collaborative effort to improve articles related to Supreme Court cases and the Supreme Court. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page.U.S. Supreme Court casesWikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court casesTemplate:WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court casesU.S. Supreme Court articles
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the importance scale.

Law

	Law portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Law, an attempt at providing a comprehensive, standardised, pan-jurisdictional and up-to-date resource for the legal field and the subjects encompassed by it.LawWikipedia:WikiProject LawTemplate:WikiProject Lawlaw articles
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale.

Taxation (inactive)

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Taxation, a project which is currently considered to be inactive.TaxationWikipedia:WikiProject TaxationTemplate:WikiProject TaxationTaxation articles

A leading case[edit]

At the risk of stating what is or should be obvious to every U.S. tax lawyer (but not to everyone else), Glenshaw Glass is a leading case in the universe of court decisions on U.S. Federal income taxation. Yours, Famspear 16:30, 30 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The "Questions arising from the Test" material[edit]

The following unsourced material has been moved from the article to here for discussion:

Although the test seems simple on its face, there are many questions that arise out of the tripartite test. The simple questions simply are: what is an accession to wealth, when is it clearly realized, and when does a taxpayer have complete dominion? Examples that speak to such questions arise out of the recent home run balls of Barry Bonds and Mark McGuire.

Is catching the ball an accession to wealth? The ball may be worth something, but how is it to be valued?

If the ball is an accession to wealth, when is it clearly realized? Is it realized when you catch it or when you sell it?

Lastly, when does a taxpayer have complete dominion? When is it that the taxpayer gains complete dominion?

The answers to these questions will greatly alter whether or not a taxpayer has gross income, and these answers are all highly debatable to this day. This is the test that is used, but it is often difficult to determine what the outcome will be.

Additionally, one of the major problems with the test in Glenshaw Glass is that it implies that the 3 prongs are easily distinct from each other. However, the "clearly realized" requirement is very ambiguous. The difficulties with this prong are clearly illustrated when one asks if the one must clearly realize the thing itself or the value. For example, if the thing itself must be clearly realized (in the homerun ball example- this would mean possession of the ball), then "clearly realized" seems redundant with the "complete dominion" prong of the test. However, if the "clearly realized" refers to the value (in the homerun ball example, this would mean selling the ball and getting its value), then it seems redundant with the "accession to wealth" prong.

This is classic law school stuff - a good discussion, and a sophisticated version of "how to." I'm not sure this kind of commentary belongs in a Wikipedia article. Can we modify this and include it in the article? Any thoughts, anyone? Famspear (talk) 02:55, 10 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]