Bacon v. Hopkins

ATWELL, District Judge.

This case grows out of a difference between the taxpayer and the taxgatherer over the meaning of the Revenue Law as to the joint income of the husband and wife, known to the law as community property. The plaintiff claims the right to divide the year’s earnings, after lawful deductions, into two funds, one'of which is his, and the other of which belongs to his wife, and to calculate the amount due the government upon each of these two smaller funds rather than upon the larger. Government agents maintain that the law means to tax such joint earnings as a unit.

The…