Meruelo v. Commissioner, No. 18-11909 (11th Cir. 2019)
Annotate this CaseIn this appeal from the disallowance of a taxpayer's claimed deduction for his share of losses suffered by an S corporation, the Eleventh Circuit held that monetary transfers between various business entities partly owned by the taxpayer and an S corporation that were later reclassified as loans from the taxpayer to the S corporation did not establish a "bona fide indebtedness" that "runs directly" to the taxpayer. Therefore, the court held that taxpayer's back-to-back theory failed because the S corporation's debt ran to the affiliates, not taxpayer. Furthermore, taxpayer's incorporated-pocketbook theory failed because the affiliates were not his incorporated pocketbook. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the tax court in favor of the Commissioner.
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