$180 Worth of Indifference

One evening in March, 1941, Mrs. Pauline Washburh, a greying, grandmotherly Manhattan widow, picked up her telephone and heard a pleasant voice say: "You're the winner of the Pot o' Gold. Congratulations! Your gift of $900 will arrive in 20 minutes."

Mildly amused and mildly amazed, Mrs. Washburn took the $900 from the radio give-away program* and spent it remodeling her brownstone house. It was some time later that she learned from friends how her telephone number had been selected on the radio show through an involved, lottery-like system of wheelspinning. Mrs. Washburn had not heard the program, had not even had the radio on. Says she: "I don't like radio and barely ever listen to the thing."

Three years later, she got a letter from an Internal Revenue employe which began, in effect: "Now, about that $180 tax. ..." Mrs. Washburn appealed to the U.S. tax court. Last week, nearly five years after she had spent the money, the court agreed that Mrs. Washburn was $180 better off for not particularly liking radio. Because she was not listening to the Pot o' Gold program, she was obviously not participating in the show. Therefore, said the Court, the $900 was clearly not a prize, but a tax-exempt gift.

* Defunct since June 1941.

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