United States Reports, Volume 530: Cases Adjudged in The Supreme Court at October Term, 1999 Page: 22
lxxv, 1-913, 1001-1216 p.View a full description of this book.
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22 RALEIGH v. ILLINOIS DEPT. OF REVENUE
Opinion of the Court
364(d)(2) (same), 547(g) (avoidability of preferential trans-
fer), 1129(d) (confirmation of plan for purpose of avoiding
taxes). But the Code makes no provision for altering the
burden on a tax claim, and its silence says that no change
was intended.2
III
The trustee looks for an advantage in the very silence of
the Code, however, first by arguing that actual, historical
practice favored trustees under the Bankruptcy Act of 1898
and various pre-Code revisions up to the current Code's en-
actment in 1978. He says that courts operating in the days
of the Bankruptcy Act, which was silent on the burden to
prove the validity of claims, almost uniformly placed the
burden on those seeking a share of the bankruptcy estate.
Because the Code generally incorporates pre-Code practice
in the absence of explicit revision, the argument goes, and
because the Code is silent here, we should follow the pre-
Code practice even when this would reverse the burden
imposed outside bankruptcy. This tradition makes sense,
petitioner urges, because in bankruptcy tax authorities are
no longer opposed to the original taxpayer, and the choice
is no longer merely whether the tax claim is paid but
whether other innocent creditors must share the bankruptcy
estate with the taxing government.
We, however, find history less availing to the trustee than
he says. While some pre-Code cases put the burden of proof
2 The legislative history indicates that the burden of proof on the issue
of establishing claims was left to the Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure.
See S. Rep. No. 95-989, p. 62 (1978); H. R. Rep. No. 95-595, p. 352 (1977).
The Bankruptcy Rules are silent on the burden of proof for claims; while
Federal Rule of Bankruptcy Procedure 3001(f) provides that a proof of
claim (the name for the proper form for filing a claim against a debtor) is
"prima facie evidence of the validity and amount of the claim," this rule
does not address the burden of proof when a trustee disputes a claim.
The Rules thus provide no additional guidance.
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Wagner, Frank D. United States Reports, Volume 530: Cases Adjudged in The Supreme Court at October Term, 1999, book, 2001; Washington D.C.. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc158378/m1/74/: accessed March 28, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.