Marquette Law Review Volume 37 Article 2 Issue 4 Spring 1954 Taxation: Extinguishment of a Contract Obligation as a "Sale or Exchange" of a Capital Asset Robert H. Gorske Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/mulr Part of the Law Commons Repository Citation Robert H. Gorske, Taxation: Extinguishment of a Contract Obligation as a "Sale or Exchange" of a Capital Asset, 37 Marq. L. Rev. 294 (1954). Available at: http://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/mulr/vol37/iss4/2 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at Marquette Law Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Marquette Law Review by an authorized administrator of Marquette Law Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. COMMENTS TAXATION-EXTINGUISHMENT OF A CONTRACT OBLIGATION AS A "SALE OR EXCHANGE" OF A CAPITAL ASSET I The capital gains and losses provisions of section 117 of the In- ternal Revenue Code do not affect the disposition of an asset unless first, the asset is a capital asset as defined by that section,' and, second, the disposition is of a type which may be characterized as a "sale or exchange" of the asset. 2 If either of these requirements is lacking in a transaction, section 117 does not apply. For the purposes of this discussion the question of whether any given asset is a capital asset will generally not be answered; it will usually be assumed without discussion either that the asset qualifies as a capital asset, or that whether it is or is not is of no consequence because no "sale or exchange" has been involved.