Jack Brown and Clara Brown v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue

CARDAMONE, Circuit Judge:

This appeal is from a November 29, 1985 order of the United States Tax Court (Wright, J.) which granted summary judgment to the appellee, Commissioner of Internal Revenue, and held that appellants had improperly deducted $120,000 for a claimed advanced minimum royalty payment. As the poet Robert Burns so wisely observed: “The best-laid schemes o’ mice and men, Gang aft a-gley....” Burns, Verses to a Mouse, in Vol. I The Poetical Works of Robert Burns 118 (Little Brown & Co. 1863). Here taxpayers’ devised a complex income tax shelter scheme that was disallowed by the…