Commissioner v. Flowers

Commissioner v. Flowers
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued December 11–12, 1945 Decided January 2, 1946
Full case name	Commissioner of Internal Revenue v. Flowers
Citations	326 U.S. 465 (more) 66 S. Ct. 250; 90 L. Ed. 203; 1946 U.S. LEXIS 3143
Case history
Prior	Flowers v. Comm'r, 148 F.2d 163 (5th Cir. 1945); cert. granted, 326 U.S. 701 (1945).
Subsequent	Rehearing denied, 326 U.S. 812 (1946).
Holding
In order to deduct the expense of traveling under §162, the expense must be incurred while away from home, and must be a reasonable expense necessary or appropriate to the development and pursuit of a trade or business.
Court membership
Chief Justice Harlan F. Stone Associate Justices Hugo Black · Stanley F. Reed Felix Frankfurter · William O. Douglas Frank Murphy · Robert H. Jackson Wiley B. Rutledge · Harold H. Burton
Case opinions
Majority	Murphy
Dissent	Rutledge
Jackson took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.
Laws applied
26 U.S.C. § 23(a)(1)(A); 26 U.S.C. § 162(a)(2) (current)

Commissioner v. Flowers, 326 U.S. 465 (1946), was a Federal income tax case before the Supreme Court of the United States.^[1] The Court held that in order to deduct the expense of traveling under § 162 of the Internal Revenue Code, the expense must be incurred while away from home, and must be a reasonable expense necessary or appropriate to the development and pursuit of a trade or business. In this case, the attorney in question could only deduct traveling expenses from her gross income when the railroad's business forced attorney to travel and live temporarily at some place other than the railroad's principal place of business. Where attorney preferred for personal reasons to live in a different state from the location of his employer's principal office, and his duties required frequent trips to that office, the evidence sustained Tax Court's finding that the necessary relation between expenses of such trips and the railroad's business was lacking.