Med residents are taxable employees, Supreme Court rules

Got this today from the Associated Press. University of Minnesota's response follows. (Note: Residents won't be paying any more than they already have. See last paragraph in U's response.)

The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that medical residents should be considered employees when it comes to collecting Social Security taxes.

The high court said that the IRS did not have to refund tax money collected by the Mayo Foundation of Rochester, Minn., and the University of Minnesota Medical residents, doctors still in training, routinely work in hospitals and pay income taxes. But Mayo officials argued that residents fall under a Social Security tax exemption for student employees whose work is part of their education.

The Treasury Department took away that exemption in 2004 for medical students who work more than 40 hours per week. The Obama administration said that Social Security taxes for medical residents can be as much as $700 million a year.

Mayo Clinic officials wanted the court to overturn a federal appeals court ruling and restore the student exemption for medical residents. It also wanted a refund of the money it had withheld and paid to the IRS on its residents' stipends during the second quarter of 2005.

In arguments before the Supreme Court, Mayo's lawyer, former solicitor general Theodore Olson, argued that the IRS' decision that anyone who works over 40 hours a week at a hospital can no longer be classified as a student was arbitrary and capricious.

But the high court ruled unanimously that the Treasury Department had the right to take away the exemption.

"The department certainly did not act irrationally in concluding that these doctors - 'who work long hours, serve as high skilled professionals, and typically share some or all of the terms of employment of career employees' - are the kind of workers that Congress intended to both contribute and benefit from the Social

Security system," said Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote the opinion for the court.

Justice Elena Kagan did not take part in the case because she signed the government's brief defending the IRS' position.

The U's response:

The University of Minnesota’s general counsel, Mark Rotenberg, expressed disappointment in today’s U.S. Supreme Court decision regarding FICA taxation of medical residents (Mayo et al. vs. United States), an issue that has been litigated since the 1990’s. At issue is whether medical residents are considered students for purposes of paying FICA taxes.

"The university is disappointed in the outcome of this case, in which we sought to protect our medical residents' stipends from FICA taxation,” said Rotenberg. “Although the Court recognized that medical residents are engaged in valuable educational pursuits, the Justices decided to defer to the Internal Revenue Service's rigid rule that residents cannot possibly qualify as students under the FICA law if they work 40 hours or more per week in their residency program."

Theodore B. Olson, counsel for the university and the Mayo Clinic, added, “We are disappointed that the Supreme Court decided to uphold the Treasury Department's exclusion of medical residents from the scope of the Student Exemption enacted by Congress. As the Court itself acknowledged, medical residents are engaged in a formal and structured educational program that is an indispensable component of their medical training. The Treasury Department's regulation overlooks the important educational pursuits in which residents are engaged."

Because the university and its medical residents have been paying FICA taxes since 2005, medical residents will see no impact on their paychecks because of the decision. Had the university prevailed, however, university officials estimate that the institution and its medical residents could have received over $24 million in refunded FICA taxes since 2005.

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