At least according to the I.R.S. -- from The Boston Globe:
Tax ruling leaves 150 Raytheon workers out in coldThat is heartless.
Pay for Antarctic work not considered by IRS as earned outside US
Meghan Prentiss thought working for Raytheon Co. as a meteorologist at McMurdo Station in Antarctica was "like going to the moon for a year." But as far as the IRS is concerned, she never left the state of Massachusetts.
What the 31-year-old Boston resident describes as "the ultimate adventure" seven years ago turned into a painful lesson in tax law. Prentiss is among about 150 people who worked on the frozen continent for the Waltham-based defense contractor who were penalized by the Internal Revenue Service for claiming on their taxes that they were working outside the United States.
Because other federal courts have ruled that Antarctica is a foreign country with regards to tort claims and the Fair Labor Standards Act, the workers believed they were on safe ground claiming the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion, which allows some US citizens who work overseas to exempt as much as $82,400 in income from federal taxes.
But the Tax Court, which handles disputes between the IRS and taxpayers, thought otherwise. In a January ruling that's binding for all the cases, the court said the workers' arguments were "irrelevant or without merit" since they were based on laws other than the tax code, which specifies that foreign countries must have governments recognized by the US government. The US rejects any territorial claims over Antarctica.
"I guess I fought the law and the law won," joked Prentiss, whose case was officially decided this month.
