The fact that the Commissioner erroneously applied the amount of the refund will not defeat recovery. Dorrance v. Phillips, 3 Cir., 85 F.2d 660. The judgment is affirmed.

Having properly determined that petitioner was not affiliated with the corporations against which deficiencies were found for the two and one-half months' period; that petitioner was not authorized to make a return or pay taxes in their behalf; and that it had itself overpaid its taxes for the year; he followed the obvious and proper procedure, i.e., issuing to petitioner a certificate of overassessment, and finding deficiencies against the others. Dorrance v. Phillips, 3 Cir., 85 F.2d 660; Hart Glass Mfg. Co. v. United States, Ct.Cl., 48 F.2d 435, 441, 442, certiorari denied 286 U.S. 556, 52 S.Ct. 639, 76 L.Ed. 1290. Hart Glass Mfg. Co. v. United States, Ct.Cl., 48 F.2d 435, certiorari denied 286 U.S. 556, 52 S.Ct. 639, 76 L.Ed. 1290; Ford Motor Co. v. United States, Ct.Cl., 9 F. Supp. 590, 601, certiorari denied 296 U.S. 636, 56 S.Ct. 170, 80 L.Ed. 452.

it was held that plaintiff was not entitled to recover merely because the Commissioner should have assessed the tax proportionately against the several corporations, instead of all against the plaintiff, the court saying, at page 669 of 14 F. Supp.: "The assessment of the tax shown to be due on the consolidated return against plaintiff who made the return, even if not strictly in accordance with the statute, was not illegal. Nor did the manner in which the assessment was made render the tax collected for 1920 illegal or refundable. For the purpose of the allocation of the assessments to the several corporations, no new assessments were necessary and the question whether any of the corporations were entitled to a refund depends upon whether it had overpaid its tax rather than upon the manner in which the original assessment was made. * * * A direct and separate assessment against a taxpayer is not necessary to a valid payment or collection of a tax due" — citing the Meyersdale Case. Dorrance v. Phillips, 85 F.2d 660 (C.C.A. Third Circuit), was a similar case, with the important difference, however, that there the other corporations had not paid or agreed to pay, to or through the plaintiff, their respective proportions of the tax. Accordingly the court, in distinguishing such a case from the Meyersdale Fuel Co. Case, said at page 661 of 85 F.2d: "If the tax, had in fact been paid by the Lackawanna Company through the Temple Company, erroneously assumed to be the parent company in the group alleged to be affiliated, the contention of the collector might be sound under the authority of the case of Meyersdale Fuel Company v. United States (Ct.Cl.)

This was true even though the credit claimed by the Government was indicated on the certificate itself. See also Dorrance v. Phillips, 3 Cir., 85 F.2d 660, where recovery was allowed on an account stated where the certificates of overassessment showed part of the overpayment was being credited to taxes owed by another taxpayer. The defendant says that the tax cases above cited and discussed are not apposite to the present situation because in those cases no claim ever arose in favor of the taxpayers until the Commissioner of Internal Revenue issued certificates of overassessment and second if the General Accounting Office did make an error it was one of fact and not law.