Thank you for your reply.
Question 1 Continued: But it is relevant, because on form 2555 row 18e, the taxpayer is asked to enter the “days on business in the US.” This is in the section where the taxpayer lists all international travel between his or her new home country and the US. This number is used to calculate the income earned in the US on business, and will be excluded from the foreign earned income exclusion.
If the departure day counts as a day on business—this is unrelated to the 330 days for the physical presence test—it will count towards the amount I must exclude from my foreign earned income. Thus, to maximize my allowable return: is the workday departure from the US to a foreign country within the tax year considered by the IRS a day on business in the US?
Question 2: If a salaried employee is allowed paid vacation as part of his or her employment agreement, this is still considered earned income, right? Row 18f asks to provide the calculation of income earned in the US on business. Which the IRS has shown an example where it was calculated as:
# of days in US on business/total days worked during the year * total income
In the IRS example of the mining engineer in country A, they chose to include that he had vacation and that it was subtracted from the 260 days in the year, to arrive at 240 for the denominator. My question is, this only would apply to it if the vacation was not earning money, I.E. a non paid vacation, right? If a employee of a company has a paid vacation, it is still earned money?
