Published: March 30, 2009 11:57 pm         

Jones says IRS personally attacked him

Staff and wire reports



A federal appeals court has rejected an attempt by Stephen Jones to reinstate a charitable income tax deduction for copies of prosecution materials from the Timothy McVeigh case he donated to the University of Texas.

A three-judge panel of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday upheld a ruling by a federal tax court that threw out the deduction claimed by Jones, an Enid attorney, for material he collected as lead defense counsel in McVeigh’s trial for the April 19, 1995, Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people.

“The opinion affirms the ruling of the tax court that the value of the gift is not deductible,” Jones said Monday.

But he said the appellate court rejected what he characterized as “ill-tempered language” in the tax court’s opinion of his case.

Jones said the Internal Revenue Service treated him and his wife, Sherrel, with “a cavalier, condescending, unprofessional attitude and behavior from beginning to end.”

“It was simply a personalized attack on me,” said Jones, who said he asked the agency’s Okla-homa City office be disqualified from the case because some IRS workers there had experienced losses in the bombing, which injured hundreds of people and caused millions of dollars in damage to areas of downtown Oklahoma City.

The attitude of the tax court “was in my opinion intemperate, personal and non-judicial,” Jones said.

A spokesman for the IRS in Dallas, Clay Sanford, declined comment on the case because of federal disclosure regulations that prohibit public discussion of individual tax matters.

An appraiser hired by Jones valued the materials at $294,877, and Jones and his wife claimed a tax deduction for that amount.

“The Internal Revenue Service didn’t challenge this for four years,” Jones said.

He said he received the deduction for four years before the IRS rejected it and sent Jones a notice of tax deficiency for $14,785.

“The amount of money was fairly small,” Jones said.

In upholding the tax court, the Denver-based federal appellate court ruled the size of the deduction Jones could claim was limited to his basis in the donated property, that is the purchasing price of the material or the amount Jones invested in it.

Jones said he did not claim the deductions without counsel.

“I relied on the opinion of two tax lawyers,” he said.

Because he had no basis in the material, he could not claim an income tax deduction, the court ruled.

“Even though I may disagree with the ruling, the court decided the issue based on the tax law,” Jones said.

Jones, who attended the University of Texas as an undergraduate, donated prosecution and defense materials following the 1997 trial of McVeigh, the Gulf War veteran who was convicted of federal murder charges and executed in 2001 for bombing the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.

The archive, which includes transcripts, FBI reports, correspondence, videotapes and other materials, sits in the university’s Center for American History.

The original ruling by the Washington-based U.S. Tax Court said Jones contacted UT in 1997 to propose the donation. It was on the same day he withdrew from representing McVeigh.

A “deed of gift” signed by UT and Jones in 2003 said the material would be available for public inspection. Photographs of deceased victims would be sealed unless Jones gave written approval.

The archive includes a statement taken from McVeigh at the Federal Correctional Institution in El Reno, where he was held before his trial. McVeigh told his lawyers how he had acquired the explosives, rented a truck and detonated the load.

Jones argued in a book that McVeigh and Terry Nichols, who was convicted of federal and state charges in the bombing, did not act alone.



Staff writer Bridget Nash and The Associated Press contributed this story.