Talk:Baxter v. United States
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A fact from Baxter v. United States appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know? column on 6 March 2008. |
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[edit] General comments
This is going to need some work. There are some dubious statements in the article. First, much of the material on the legal status of the case is cited to an article. The actual text of the court decision tells a different story.
This statement:
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- William E. Baxter Jr. v. United States was a 1986 court case that provided that poker players could file their income taxes as professionals, and thus have their earnings treated not as unearned income but rather as earned income.
--This is partially correct. The court specifically did NOT rule that poker players could file their income taxes as professionals -- indeed, that was not even an issue in the case. In fact, the court specifically stated that the parties did not dispute the fact that Baxter was a "professional gambler." (In legal parlance, that means that whether he was a professional gambler was not an issue presented to the court, and was not an issue decided by the court.)
I will be looking at the text of the court's decision in more depth later. The article does not actually state what the court really ruled in the case.
The quote on the judge is not found in the actual text of the court's decision. The quote appears to be something that the judge may have stated in open court -- but it's not in the actual written court decision.
Despite the statement in the article that the Court of Appeals upheld the trial court, a preliminary check shows no record of any appeal of this case to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. However, I need to do more checking on that.
Part of the problem with the article is that it cites only to secondary sources, without reference to the actual text of the court's decision in the case. Normally in Wikipedia, secondary sources (e.g., articles) are preferred over primary sources (e.g., the actual text of the court decision). However, this policy can lead to accuracy problems, and I think we have some of those problems here.
Stay tuned. Famspear (talk) 19:15, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
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- OK, I've made a start. I've added some material from the court case itself. I have not deleted much of the secondary source material. If it turns out that we cannot locate a record of the appeal of this case, we will deal with that issue separately.
[edit] Suggestion on further content
I divided the article into sections to delineate certain areas. I think a history section with content on the history of gambling winnings and their taxability would be pertinent to add further context to the article's topic.EECavazos (talk) 17:10, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
