William Burnham Woods

“ We regard the presentation of the claims to the commissioner of internal revenue for the refunding of a tax alleged to have been illegally exacted as a condition on which alone the government consents to litigate the lawfulness of the original tax. It is clearly not the intent of the statute to allown the collector to be sued unless the tax-payer has first applied for relief to the commissioner within the time and in the manner pointed out by law, and relief has been denied him. ”

“ The prescribed return had the following words written upon its face: 'This return, not esempting any part of accounts exceeding $2,000 in the name of any one person, is made under protest, by compulsion, to prevent a penalty from being assessed; but the accompanying is claimed to be the true and legal return exempting $2,000 of all deposits made in the name of any one person ”