Continuing our series on Famous Tax Quotes (quotes from court opinions and rulings with language that is colorful or that concisely states an important tax principle) today's tax quote is:
At this point, we are reminded of the words of Chief Judge Kaufman, who noted the ability of Congress to pass statutes certain to accelerate the aging process of judges: “We have had occasion to note the striking resemblance between some of the laws we are called upon to interpret and King Minos' labyrinth in ancient Crete.” Lok v. Immigration and Naturalization Service, 548 F. 2d 37, 38 (2d Cir. 1977).
Rickey v. United States, 592 F.2d 1251, 1256 n. 5 (5th Cir. 1979).
The Court in Rickey was addressing the entity attribution rules of Code §318 in the context of a complete redemption under Code §302(b)(3) (See our flowchart of Code §302 at Tax-Charts.com).
I suspect that the complexity of these laws not only accelerates the aging process of judges, but also accelerates the aging process of tax advisors that deal with these laws on a regular basis.
