Workmen's Mutual Fire Insurance Society, Inc. v. Harold B. A'hearn, United States District Director of Internal Revenue

SMITH, Circuit Judge.

The taxpayer is a mutual fire insurance company incorporated under the laws of New York and doing business on a nationwide scale. During the 1920’s Workmen’s had quite a substantial portion of its funds invested in first mortgages on real estate. During the depression, after repeated defaults and as a last resort to protect its prior investments, the taxpayer foreclosed, or accepted deeds in lieu of foreclosure, on some seventeen parcels of improved real property. New York law forbade this type of insurer from owning and administering real property as a business venture…