I posted this under the tax protest forum as well; since Driscoll spent time for tax evasion. It also seems to have some relevance here, so I am posting it here as well. My legal advisors have indicated it is most likely that the Supreme Court will deny cert. However, my fantasy is that it will accept the case and do what the 9th Circuit was thwarted in doing; taking up the constitutional issue first.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.ecfa.org/Content/Driscoll-As ... Housing-Al\
lowance-Case
Driscoll Asks U.S. Supreme Court to Review Housing Allowance Case
August 13, 2012
Phil Driscoll has asked the U.S. Supreme court to review his housing allowance
case. Earlier a three-judge panel of the federal Eleventh Circuit Court of
Appeals in Atlanta overturned a U.S. Tax Court decision allowing clergy members
to claim a tax exclusion for more than one home.
The ruling reversed the Tax Court's decision in Driscoll v. Commissioner, which
was made final in March 2011.
The taxpayers in the case were Phil Driscoll and his wife, Lynne. Mr. Driscoll,
who is an ordained minister as well as a Grammy-award-winning trumpeter, heads
Mighty Horn Ministries, a nonprofit based in Greensboro, Ga., that had total
income of more than $6 million from 2005 to 2009.
At issue in the case were more than $400,000 of tax exclusions the Driscolls
took over a period of four years for a lakefront second home near their first
home in Cleveland, Tenn.
The ministry provided the second home to the couple under the "housing
allowance" of the tax code, often known as the "parsonage allowance."
This provision allows ordained clergy either to live tax-free in a home provided
by a religious organization or to receive a tax-free annual payment to buy or
rent a home as part of approved "reasonable compensation."
Driscoll's position is that the Tax Court erred when it concluded that the word
"home" in Code Sec. 107 included both singular and plural forms of the word
because the statutory context did not support the Dictionary Act's, 1 U.S.C. §1,
singular-to-plural provision.
The taxpayers' argument that, if Congress had intended to limit the income
exclusion under Code Sec. 107(2) to the minister's principal residence, it could
have added language to that effect was rejected.
The consistent use of the singular in the legislative history of Code Sec. 107
demonstrated that Congress intended for the parsonage allowance exclusion to
apply to only one home.
Source: Federal Tax Day, August 8, 2012
---------------------------------------
---------------------------------------