A woman denied a tax refund on $300,000 in income from a family business she paid back to her ex-husband, rather than paying back the federal government directly, has won a ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in her case against the IRS.

“Inscribed above the main entrance of the Internal Revenue Service office in Washington, D.C., is a quotation from Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.: ‘Taxes are what we pay for a civilized society,’ ” Circuit Judge Robin Rosenbaum wrote. “An admirable outlook, yet even Justice Holmes would likely agree that it is uncivilized to impose taxes on citizens for income they did not ultimately receive. But that is precisely the result the government asks us to uphold today.”

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