Important things to know about the IRS Form 8843

INTRODUCTION TO FORM 8843

Form 8843 is a form for collecting personal information including personal visa information, entry and exit records of the United States, and projects undertaken in the United States. If after judging your tax status, you find that you are an Exempt Individual (exempt individual in the United States may not be counted in the United States, the advantage of doing so is to avoid being counted as a “resident” because you have lived in the United States for more than half a year. Then you need to fill out Form 8843 to declare the number of days that you do not stay in the United States. To put it simply, for students who come to the United States for FJQM visas, this type of status belongs to Exempt Individual in the first five years of the United States, so all days of the first five years of the student’s stay in the United States can be excluded, so the top five of the student status all belong to Non-Resident. Therefore, as Non-Resident, you must fill out Form 8843 to exclude days spent in the US. The JQM visas are visas for students temporarily staying in the United States for the primary purpose of studying at an academic institution or vocabulary school.

Form 8843 does not contain any information about income, but for legal compliance, the US government requires all Non-Resident, regardless of income, to submit Form 8843 to the tax office. Special attention should be paid to tax returns for foreign students without income.

PEOPLE WHO NEED TO FILL OUT FORM 8843

To put it simply, as long as during the tax year, individuals who are Exempt Individuals for a certain period of time need to complete Form 8843.

People with A and G visas, (except A3 and G5) – The Exempt individual period is while they hold their Visas.

FJQM Visa Student: The person with the student visa and his family – The period is for the first five years of holding this visa without changing their status.

JQ Visa Teacher and Trainee: Teachers and trainers and their families – The period is for the first 2 years, without changing status.

Professional athletes – They come to the United States to participate in non-profit competitions. They fill the form all the time.

DOCUMENTS REQUIRED BY FORM 8843

• Passport (and visa inside),
• US immigration records (accurate dates can be obtained on the website, do not worry about forgetting),
• The latest I-20 form (Program information and Program Adviser Information)
• It is important to note that a social security number (SSN) or tax return number (ITIN) is not required to fill out Form 8843.

TIME REQUIRED TO FILL FORM 8843

According to the complexity of visa and entry and exit of each person, it is estimated that 20-30 minutes should be enough.

MAIN CONTENT OF FORM 8843

Mainly fill in your non-immigrant visa type (F-1, F-2, J-1 or J-2) identity information, length of stay in the United States, school information, etc.

ADDRESS TO DOWNLOAD FORM 8843

Form 8843 can be downloaded from the IRS official website. When downloading, you should pay attention to which tax year Form 8843 is in. Generally, the tax year of Form 8843 will be written in the upper right corner of the form. Make sure the year is correct.

There are five parts to be filled on the form

Part I is for personal and basic information

Personal Information

Name

Social Insurance Number (SSN) or Tax Return Number (ITIN): You don’t need to fill this.

Address in your original country

Address in the United States

Basic information

Visa and date of entry into the United States for the first time and current visa

Nationality (Which country holds the passport)

Country holding passport and passport number

Time spent in the United States in the last three years and the number of days that can be waived in the tax year. This is explained below.

Calculation: Time spent in the United States in the last three years

Date calculation: The date of entering and leaving the United States can be found on the I-94 website. Fill in the name, birthday, passport number and passport issuing country, click NEXT, you can see the date of your every visit to the United States.

Because the tax return is always lagging (the 2020 tax is reported in 2019), when the partners find out the entry records, they will definitely have their own days in the United States in 2019. How to treat the days after the tax year?

Number of days in the United States in 2020: Since Form 8843 is being reported for 2019, they care about the entry and exit records and dates until December 31, 2019. In other words, when reporting the tax in 2019, everything that happened in 2020 is unknown and will not be reported in the future.

Calculation: Number of days that can be exempted in the tax year

After calculating the actual number of days spent in the United States each year and filling in for the time spent in the United States for the last three years, the second part requires that the number of days spent in the United States for the tax year be excluded . What does it mean?

The giant panda studied the tax law and found that a person staying in the United States for more than a certain number of days would become Resident as defined in the tax law. Such a disadvantage is that the United States will tax the taxpayer’s assets globally. However, students and scholars studying and communicating in the United States do not want to be Residents, so the tax office specifically lists the identities of some people who cannot count days in the United States and the years in which they can count days.

FILL IN FORM 8843 PART 2 – PART 5:

The following part, it is important to fill in the relevant part according to the identity, other parts do not need to be filled.

Teachers and trainees – Part 2

Students – Part 3

Professional athletes – Part 4

Individuals with a medical condition or problem – Part 5

In the following, we will take the international student tax declaration as an example, fill in truthfully your School name, address, phone number, Project teacher’s name, office address, and phone, the Tax year and the type of visa held in the previous six years.

Note that if the foreign student has been in the United States for more than 5 years during the tax year, because the tax status is Resident Alien, it is no longer necessary to fill out Form 8843. Also note that If the international student successfully applied for a green card when filing the tax, it is no longer necessary to fill out Form 8843. If the application has not been approved, the reason should be marked. For example, the EB-5 investment immigration application is still in the approval stage.

CONSEQUENCES OF NOT SUBMITTING FORM 8843

Failure to submit Form 8843 may leave your identity in the United States as a hidden danger that is questioned by the government. The submission of Form 8843 is to end your Legal Prosecution Period.

[Legal prosecution period] Relationship with tax liability

[Legal prosecution period] is the period when the other party can hold you accountable. The end of the legal prosecution period means that the other party (such as the government) cannot hold you accountable for this matter. For tax return students, the tax bureau has a statutory recovery period of 3 years for the reports you submit, and has the right to issue questions and audits to you within three years of submitting the reports. But if the tax bureau hasn’t looked for you within three years, you won’t be able to hold back any errors in the statements you submitted four years or earlier. But if you have never paid a tax form, the three- year countdown of your statutory prosecution period has never started, so the Inland Revenue Department can be held responsible for failing to file a tax return while studying abroad.

Students, be advised to adhere to the laws provided by the US. Don’t joke about your future because during your period of study in the United States, you must maintain a good record of yourself in the United States, obey local laws, and file your taxes on time.

This covers everything you need to know about the Form 8843, a required form for tax returns for foreign students, which is actually easier to fill than you think.