He testified that given his numerous responsibilities at the dealership, he didn’t have the time to do this himself and needed to hire someone, such as his mother-in-law, “whom he could fully trust with this sensitive information” to do this work prior to submission to the dealership’s accountant for posting.
During cross-examination, it was suggested the taxpayer’s mother-in-law’s knowledge of English was poor, to which he responded that she had had some ESL training and that the work he had her do did not involve knowing English as long as she was “able to add and subtract.” For the 2015 tax year, the judge concluded there was no evidence the taxpayer normally charged his mother-in-law for rent, food and transportation, so he found the $24,000 paid to her as an assistant was non-deductible.Article content