John M. Trent and Lisa M. Trent v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue

FRIENDLY, Circuit Judge.

The question is whether a corporate employee who makes loans to the corporation in order to hold his job may deduct for a business bad debt if the loans become worthless. Despite the Tax Court’s statement, echoed before us by the Commissioner, that to give an affirmative answer “it would be necessary to overrule a large proportion of the cases dealing with this subject,” the Commissioner has cited no decision of the Supreme Court or of a Court of Appeals squarely in his favor. Neither has the taxpayer. There are dicta favorable to the Commissioner; the language of the…