Art's sale value? Zero. The tax bill? $29M

Re:Art's sale value? Zero. The tax bill? $29M by gamblor956 on Friday July 19, 2019 @02:55PM (#20481469)

Where the government imposes conflicting laws and penalties, affected parties can go to court and the court decides which law prevails (and must be followed) and which law to create a common-law exception for. This is literally been the case for the entirety of American history...

In this case, it wasn't necessary because the children agreed to turn over the inherited stuffed eagle to a museum and the IRS agreed that it had no sales value in the hands of a non-museum.

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Re:Art's sale value? Zero. The tax bill? $29M by longerthoughts on Friday July 19, 2019 @03:30PM (#20481731)

If the IRS decided to seize all of your assets tomorrow without reasonable justification, you would probably win in court. That doesn't mean we should all be indifferent to whether or not they make the attempt. It's great that this went to court and resulted in a reasonable outcome, but how much time, effort and money had to go into reaching a reasonable conclusion?

Just because a safety net exists doesn't mean the IRS should be shoving people into it.

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Re:Art's sale value? Zero. The tax bill? $29M by C1sc0cat on Monday July 22, 2019 @06:14AM (#20496656)

And if this happened to the Average software engineer (you for example) you will be able to take the federal government to court?

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