No, it’s not a misspelling. Janice Kay Haskins and Julian William Haskins, 2019 T. C. Memo. 87, filed 7/11/19, get a metal brake from Judge Morrison. They also get a paint sprayer, an air compressor, and painting supplies. But they don’t get the power generator or the saw blades, whether circular or reciprocating.

The stuff needs to be depreciated, and Judge Morrison obligingly does the numbers. It’s Julie’s stuff, which IRS claims aren’t unreimbursed employee expenses, because when he bought them he was no longer employed.

“The record (including the testimony of Mr. Haskins) establishes that the metal brake was purchased for Mr. Haskins’ own business of construction, not for his business of performing services as an employee of L D Greer Builders & Trim. The fact that the metal brake was not purchased for the business of performing services as an employee does not preclude a deduction under section 167(a).” 2019 T. C. Memo. 87, at pp. 24-25. (Footnote omitted).

When I stopped being an employee and went out on my own, I deducted my business expenses. But unlike Janice Kay, who lumped together unreimbursed employee business expenses and Julie’s own business expenses when she did their MFJ, I filed each category separately.

Janice Kay claimed Section 911 treatment for her year in Afghanistan as a contractor. But she kept her AZ contacts, and never left either forward operations base to which was assigned, either the one she liked or the one she didn’t. “These bases were often under attack by rocket-propelled grenades and suicide bombers.” 2019 T. C. Memo. 87, at p. 18.

Not the sort of places you’d want for your “abode.”

So no exclusion for Janice Kay.

By the way, “A metal brake is a tool that bends sheet metal.” 2019 T. C. Memo. 87, at p. 23.