Newark Morning Ledger Co., As Successor to the Herald Company v. United States (507 U.S. 546)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided April 20, 1993 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 507 U.S. 546 · 113 S. Ct. 1670
- Decided
- April 20, 1993
- Term
- October Term 1992
- Vote
- 5–4
- Majority author
- Justice Blackmun
- Issue area
- Federal Taxation
- Disposition
- Reversed and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Justice Blackmun delivered the opinion of the Court. This case presents the issue whether, under § 167 of the Internal Revenue Code, 26 U. S. C. § 167, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) may treat as nondepreciable an intangible asset proved to have an ascertainable value and a limited useful life, the duration of which can be ascertained with reasonable accuracy, solely because the IRS considers the asset to be goodwill as a matter of law. I Petitioner Newark Morning Ledger Co., a New Jersey corporation, is a newspaper publisher. It is the successor to The Herald Company with which it merged in 1987. Eleven years earlier, in 1976, Herald had purchased substantially all the outstanding shares of Booth Newspapers, Inc., the publisher of daily and Sunday newspapers in eight Michigan communities. Herald and Booth merged on May 31, 1977, and Herald continued to publish the eight papers under their old names. Tax code provisions in effect in 1977 required that Herald allocate its adjusted income tax basis in the Booth shares among the assets acquired in proportion to their respective fair market values at the time of the merger. See 26 U. S. C. §§332 and 334(b)(2) (1976 ed.). Prior to the merger, Herald’s adjusted basis in the Booth shares was approximately $328 million. Herald allocated $234 million of this to various financial assets (cash, securities, accounts and notes…
Excerpt of a 36,349-character opinion. The full text and citation network load in the interactive viewer above.