Business: Father of the Bride

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To celebrate his daughter's wedding more than four years ago, Bernard Glagovsky invited 320 guests to drink champagne and dance in the main ballroom of Boston's Bradford Hotel. Many of the guests had never met the bride & groom before, and were invited only because they were customers of Glagovsky's Haverhill Shoe Novelty Co. (bows, buckles and ornaments). After Glagovsky paid the $9,200 wedding bill, he decided that $6,245 of it was a tax deductible item as an "ordinary and necessary advertising expense of the corporation."

Last week the U.S. tax court took a more old-fashioned view of weddings. It ruled that "the corporation [illegally] acted as the 'father of the bride' [when Glagovsky] decided to use his daughter's wedding as a means of entertaining some of his corporation's customers." Said Glagovsky sadly: "If I knew it was going to come out this way I never would have done it . . ."