Talk:Murphy v. IRS

Unsourced material

Regarding this paragraph:

Murphy’s position was that her award constituted only monies that “made her whole” and, in effect, was a return of her “human capital.” After the August 2006 decision was announced, lead attorney David K. Colapinto, who argued the case before the Court, said of the appellee's position, “The government had the audacity to argue that non-wage compensatory damages for emotional distress and loss of reputation can be taxed as income because the economic value of human life is zero. The taxing of non-wage damages is highly destructive and punishes whistleblowers and other civil rights plaintiffs for prevailing in their cases. Hopefully, today’s ruling will stop this arcane and regressive policy.”

The quotation attributed to Colapinto is problematic on two counts. First, and most importantly, it is unsourced.

Second, the claim that the government somehow argued that the "the economic value of human life is zero" is dubious. The "economic value of human life" would be immaterial in a case under IRC section 104(a)(2), and it is highly unlikely that any competent tax lawyer would make such an argument. What the government probably noted -- and what Colapinto may have been referring to -- was that the taxpayer's tax basis in her "human life" is zero -- which would be a legally correct statement (i.e., the costs would be non-deductible expenses under IRC section 262, not "capital expenditures" that could be included in "tax basis"). A "human life" is not "property" under the Internal Revenue Code, and there is no provision in the Internal Revenue Code for a person to have "tax basis" in a "human life." And tax basis and economic value are two different things.

I am adding a citation tag to the quotation in the article. If Colapinto actually said this, perhaps someone can locate the source. Also, maybe someone can look for some evidence that the government actually made such an argument as Colapinto allegedly claims the government made. Yours, Famspear 17:16, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Unsourced commentary deleted

I deleted some unsourced commentary about the judges in this case supposedly having being under pressure to reverse their August 2006 decision. The judges were indeed subject to ridicule from the legal community, especially from tax law experts, about the 2006 decision. However, the material in the article was unsourced and, to some extent (at least in my view) overstated the case for "pressure." United States Appeals Court judges (who basically serve for life) simply are not subject to political pressure to nearly the same degree as, say, elected political figures. The general consensus among tax experts may well be that the judges were embarrassed by their original decision, and found a way to salvage something from it. However, that's my personal conjecture -- not necessarily something that should go in the article. Famspear 16:05, 11 August 2007 (UTC)