Tax question for lawyers et.al

That's why I included the line in my post that lawyers can argue about this "until the cows come home".

That is, the tax code is huge - - it contains tons and tons of pamphlets with complicated language in it. You can find a publication that seems to apply to the case (as I did in post #13), but someone else can find another publication that they claim supercedes your publication, or argue that the language in the first publication doesn't really apply to your particular case.

The lawyers from each side spend days arguing about what the definition of "is" is, then the judge makes a decision based upon whether or not his bunion is hurting him, and justice is done in the good old USA!

By the way, it is really amazing about the level of minuetia that they get into. I used to work doing "1065" Partnership returns for the IRS. Even did a tax-dodge for Bob Dylan. You'd come accross some odd-ball listing that you'd swear that there wouldn't be any information on - - and discover that there was a whole pamphlet on it with nine different variations on your "one in a million case".

After I got through, I would box up my work, and like in the last scene of Indiana Jones and Raiders of the Lost Ark, I would put my box in a tremendously humongous warehouse, row 132, shelf J, bin 67 - - where uncle sam could lay his hands on it if he ever needed it.

The scale from tiny minuetia to huge over-arching encompassment is staggering to behold! We have a BIG government!

GB wrote:
“DN.......As far as your brother goes, he got ripped. He should have challenged that attorney's claim to a fee. IMO, the attorney was over-reaching and taking advantage of an individual unsophisticated as legal terminology.”

Well, this happened a long time ago. My brother was only about 19 or 20. I am his younger brother and I am now 50!
So, maybe the laws were different then. Or, maybe my brother could have protested the attorney fee, but by that time he was disgusted with the whole mess (he had spent a long time arguing with the mechanic: “when’s my car going to be ready?”, while his car was sitting out on the street gathering dust and parking tickets). After the court process, discovering his car was totaled with the engine bored out wrong - - and ticketed, and discovering the mechanic was gone, leaving no assets behind, bro was not in the mood to fight it out with a lawyer - - he just gave in.

It was kind of a cool car (in a Edsel sort of way). It was an old Dodge DeSoto with a push-button transmission, and an art-deco speedometer (little red bars would pop up for each 5 m.p.h. to form a red line going across your dashboard).

It looked something like the picture below. (Although WHY the steering wheel is on the right-hand side, I can't figure. The picture is not reversed - - the license plate reads o.k. It was the closest pic I could find).