Thanks to RIA for a pointer to this case–Donahue’s Accounting and Tax Service, S.C. v. Ryno, Donahue’s Accounting and Tax Service, S.C. v. Ryno, 674 NW2d 681 (Wisc. App., 2003). Without going into all of the facts of the case, suffice it to say that the court had some humorous remarks to make about the Internal Revenue Code as follows:
Whether or not Donahue breached a duty to Ryno to file a claim for “Innocent Spouse” status prior to filing her 1999 tax returns requires reading, comprehending and applying the Internal Revenue Code (IRC). It is obvious to this court that the IRC is incomprehensible without the assistance of a qualified expert in tax law.This conclusion is best supported by a short and snappy comment from Justice Jackson, once Chief Counsel for the IRS, in a dissenting opinion in Arrowsmith v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 344 U.S. 6, 12 (1952), where he referred to federal taxation as “a field beset with invisible boomerangs.“
One of America’s most respected jurists, Judge Learned Hand, offers a more thoughtful observation on the law of taxation:
In my own case the words of such an act as the Income Tax … merely dance before my eyes in a meaningless procession; cross-reference to cross-reference, exception upon exception-couched in abstract terms that offer no handle to seize hold of-leave in my mind only a confused sense of some vitally important, but successfully concealed, purport, which it is my duty to extract, but which is within my power, if at all, only after the most inordinate expenditure of time. I know that these monsters are the result of fabulous industry and ingenuity, plugging up this hole and casting out that net, against all possible evasion; yet at times I cannot help recalling a saying of William James about certain passages of Hegal: that they were no doubt written with a passion of rationality; but that one cannot help wondering whether to the reader they have any significance save that the words are strung together with syntactical correctness.
Ruth Realty Co. v. Horn, 353 P.2d 524, 526 n.2 (Or. 1960) (citing 57 Yale L.J. 167, 169 (1947)), overruled on other grounds by Parr v. DOR, 553 P.2d 1051 (Or. 1976).