Mel v. Franchise Tax Board

Opinion

NEWSOM, J.

The present appeal is one of four companion cases argued and submitted together to this court. The central question common to all four cases is whether surviving spouses of decedents who died after 1965 and before 1976 are entitled to a new tax basis, for state personal income tax purposes, for their share of certain community property, the decedent’s share of which was transferred, at least in part, into a testamentary trust from which the surviving spouse benefit-ted. The answer to this necessarily somewhat convoluted question depends upon the interpretation given certain…