In a case of first impression, the Tax Court held that the U.S.–Canada Tax Treaty (Treaty) did not exempt a Canadian citizen from U.S. income tax on the unemployment compensation she received from the State of Ohio. Pei Fang Guo v. Commissioner, 149 T.C. No. 14. The taxpayer came to the U.S. in 2010 as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Cincinnati. She worked at UC from 2010 through 2011 on a nonimmigrant professional visa. When her employment contract ended in November 2011, she returned to Canada after she was unable to find other work in the U.S., where she stayed through 2012. When her UC employment contract ended, the taxpayer applied to the State of Ohio for unemployment compensation, which she received in 2012. When the taxpayer filed her 2012 U.S. tax return, she took the position that her unemployment compensation was exemption from income tax under Article XV of the Treaty. Instead, she reported the unemployment compensation on her Canadian tax return. The IRS disagreed, and the taxpayer filed a petition in Tax Court.

The Tax Court said that the taxpayer was a nonresident alien in 2012, which means she was neither a U.S. citizen nor resident. Generally, nonresident aliens must pay U.S. tax on their U.S.–source income. Everyone agreed that the taxpayer’s unemployment compensation was U.S.–source income. As a result, the only question left for the Tax Court to decide was whether the taxpayer’s unemployment compensation was exempt from U.S. income tax under the Treaty. But the Treaty does not mention unemployment compensation, except to say it does not count as social security.

The taxpayer focused her argument on the term “remunerations” in Article XV of the Treaty. Article XV governs the treatment of “salaries, wages, and other similar remunerations derived . . . in respect of an employment.” But the Treaty does not define “remunerations” either, so the Tax Court turned to the Code. “Remuneration” appears twice in the Code. Section 3401(a) says that “the term ‘wages’ means all remunerations . . . for services performed by an employee for his employer,” and section 3121(b) says that the “term ‘wages’ means all remuneration for employment.”

The Tax Court held that, just as unemployment compensation is not the same thing as “wages,” unemployment compensation does not constitute “similar remuneration derived. . . in respect to employment” under Article XV. The taxpayer wasn’t employed by UC when she received her unemployment compensation. And she did not receive it from her former employer.  She received it from the State of Ohio. As a result, the Tax Court concluded she was required to pay U.S. taxes on her unemployment compensation.