Ncnb Corporation, a North Carolina Corporation North Carolina National Bank v. United States

Neither reargument by counsel, nor eloquence of Judge Widener writing for the en banc majority convinces me that the panel opinion1 coming to the opposite conclusion was erroneous.

First, I find altogether unpersuasive the determination that an established line of four circuit decisions2 must be rejected on the basis of a non-specific obiter statement in Commissioner v. Lincoln Savings & Loan Association, 403 U.S. 345, 91 S.Ct. 1893, 29 L.Ed.2d 519 (1971).3 The holding in Lincoln Savings was that the expenditure was capital in nature and so “not an expense, let alone an ordinary expense,…