Background
The full text of the IRS regulation defining constructive receipt states as follows:
“Income although not actually reduced to a taxpayer's possession is constructively received by him in the taxable year during which it is credited to his account, set apart for him, or otherwise made available so that he may draw upon it at any time, or so that he could have drawn upon it during the taxable year if notice of intention to withdraw had been given. However, income is not constructively received if the taxpayer's control of its receipt is subject to substantial limitations or restrictions.”
The United States Tax Court more concisely articulated the doctrine of constructive receipt in Davis v. Commissioner. The court stated that for income to be constructively received, the funds must be made available to the taxpayer without substantial limitations. At issue was whether or not a taxpayer faced such substantial limitations when a check was available to her at the post office on the last day of the tax year after the mail carrier attempted to deliver the certified letter containing it to her home earlier the same day. The taxpayer was not at home when the first delivery attempt was made and the carrier left a note that the letter would be at the post office for her. The taxpayer retrieved the check from the post office several days later, just after the new tax year began. Courts had previously held that when a taxpayer makes a decision to be unavailable to take delivery of a check, then he will not satisfy the substantial limitations requirement and he will be deemed to have had constructive receipt at the time of attempted delivery. However in this case, the court noted that the check sender specifically informed the taxpayer on a prior occasion that the check would be arriving approximately two months later than it actually did. The taxpayer had no notice to expect that the check would be delivered; therefore she could not have made a decision to be unavailable to take receipt. The court held that this lack of notice, under the circumstances, meant that she faced substantial limitations on the availability of the funds and that they were not constructively received during the first tax year.
Read more about this topic: Constructive Receipt
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn’t know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“I had many problems in my conduct of the office being contrasted with President Kennedy’s conduct in the office, with my manner of dealing with things and his manner, with my accent and his accent, with my background and his background. He was a great public hero, and anything I did that someone didn’t approve of, they would always feel that President Kennedy wouldn’t have done that.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)