Income Tax

INCOME TAX

Everyone in non-immigrant status (ie., F, J, M, H) is required by law to file a tax return with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the agency of the US federal government that collects taxes, whether you earned any income in the US or not.
If you have been in the US in one of these statuses for 5 years or less, you will be considered a non-resident for tax purposes. In most cases, students and scholars will need to file the 1040 NR EZ form and the 8843.
If you have not earned any income while in the US, you may be able to file only the 8843.
Some countries have tax treaties with the United States which allow students and scholars to pay limited taxes while in the US to study or conduct research. Please be aware that if you are in F, J, M status you should not file the 1040 EZ unless you have been in the US for more than 5 years and can pass the substantial presence test.
Once the tax forms have been completed, they should be mailed to Internal Revenue Service, Philadelphia, PA 19255.
If you had any earned income from working in the United States in that year, your returns must be filed by April.
If you had no U.S. source income, your forms must be mailed by June. If you have earned income while in the US, you may also be required to file state tax forms. These forms are available in most public libraries and post offices. They come in a package with all the forms you will need.
State taxes varies from state to state.
Tax forms can be downloaded from the web from the following sites, provided you have Adobe Reader (the files are in PDF format).
Federal tax forms:
- IRS web site at http://www.irs.ustreas.gov/prod/ has all Federal forms and publications as well as a link to find the forms for individual states.
- Maxwell Technologies at http://www.scubed.com/tax/index.html (this is a technology firm which puts up tax forms as a public relations gesture – this can be much faster than the IRS page).
For State tax information:
- you can visit the web site related to your state's tax information.
In the past, the University of Pennsylvania has had a very good collection of handouts for international students on preparing taxes at http://www.upenn.edu/oip/fsa/tax/taxoffindex.html