Dr. Inga I. Kramarenko, T. C. Memo. 2025-61, filed 6/9/25, is an expert with highly technical skills, including but without in any way in limitation of the foregoing (as my expensive colleagues say) signal transduction in highly specialized cells, T. C. Memo. 2025-61, at p. 5.

Doc Inga, or shall we say post-Doc Inga, because she was a post-doctoral fellow at Medical University of South Carolina, wasn’t “from around here, are ya?” as they say in SC.  Doc Inga was from Russia, here on a J-1 visa as an “Exchange Visitor.” Doc Inga was resident alien because substantially present the magic number of days, and the payout from MUSC was of course effectively connected.

But does Article 18 of Convention for the Avoidance of Double Taxation and the Prevention of Fiscal Evasion with Respect to Taxes on Income and Capital, Russ.-U.S. (“Treaty”), June 17, 1992, T.I.A.S. No. 93-1216 bail out post-Doc Inga from US income tax?

Since post-Doc Inga case is located in SC, whom else but Judge David Gustafson, son of the Palmetto State, to pronounce the result.

Sorry, post-Doc Inga.

Judge Gustafson begins with the flush language of Article 18: only “payments made ‘with respect to the grant, allowance, or other similar payments’ are exempt from US tax. While post-Doc Inga got paid for her lab stints out of research grants, so were the people who cleaned the floors. But that post-Doc Inga was designated as an “employee” in the bushelbasket of MUSC papers doesn’t make her an employee.

What does is that she got a quid pro quo. True, she got valuable training and mentoring. But she also did work that provided a real benefit to MUSC, which retained whatever results post-Doc Inga got.

“MUSC received the benefit of Dr. Kramarenko’s full-time skilled labor working on specific research projects as a condition of Dr. Kramarenko receiving ordinary compensation in the form of a salary (with regular increases) and various other benefits incidental to employment. In other words MUSC required a substantial quid pro quo from Dr. Kramarenko in the form of her services.” T. C. Memo. 2025-61, at p. 19.

As for good faith to avoid penalties, post-Doc Inga fails that course.

“On the sole basis of her reading of the Treaty and on her conversations with colleagues, and without the advice of a tax professional, Dr. Kramarenko filed income tax returns for years… showing zero taxable income, on the ground that (she concluded) her entire salary from MUSC was excluded from taxation under the Treaty—contrary to the position reflected on the Forms W–2 that MUSC issued to her every year.

“In addition to erroneously omitting her salary income, Dr. Kramarenko made several misrepresentations on her [years at issue] income tax returns, including using a filing status of ‘single nonresident alien’ when she was in fact a married resident alien. Dr. Kramarenko also misrepresented on Forms 8840 attached to her income tax returns that her tax home was Russia and that she had a closer connection to Russia than to the United States, even though at the time she was preparing those returns she had lived with her American husband in their marital home in South Carolina….” T. C. Memo. 2025-61, at pp. 20-21.