Brief How-To on filling the taxes for WT students

Useful links:

• www.irs.gov – Internal Revenue Service (the institution that deals with collecting the taxes in the US)
• http://www.irs.gov/formspubs/article/0,,id=98171,00.html – the IRS webpage where can be found all the forms needed to fill taxes (the summer student – workers only need to fill form 1040NR-EZ), plus one set of filling instructions for each of the forms.

NR stands for Non-Resident alien

EZ stands for Easy (it’s a simplified form for individuals not married and without children)

Preliminary information

Some of the American citizens are not required to fill in taxes in one year if their income is lower than a specified level. However, this rule doesn’t apply for the Work & Travel participants: all the Work & Travel students are required by the IRS to fill in the taxes.

IRS considers taxes filled in on time if the mailing date is before the 15th of April, 2008. The more a person delays sending the form to the IRS, the longer is going to take to receive back the check with his returns for the year (it usually takes the IRS several weeks to process and mail back the check, and April-May is the busiest time of the year).

In order to fill in your taxes, you need to receive from each of your employers a W-2i form in which they declare the total of wages you earned and the total of taxes you paid. Usually it arrives around the end of January.

If you are an unmarried, without children Work & Travel participant is best that you fill in form 1040NR-EZ, since it’s the shorter and easier of all the 1040 forms.

Besides 1040EZ, there are few more forms that some students might need to fill (if they didn't receive W2i from employers, if they changed their addres, if they need more time to fill the taxes. if they filled the tax forms erroneoulsy, etc)

• 8316 : Request for Refund of Social Security Tax Erroneously Withheld on Wages Received by a Nonresident Alien on an F, J, or M Type Visa
• 8822 : Change of Address (the address written on the work contract and on the W2)
• 2848 : Power of Attorney and Declaration of Representative (this form is used by the companies that deal with tax filling in order to be empowered by their customers to fill taxes in their names)
• 4868 : Application for Automatic Extension of Time to File U.S. Individual Income Tax Return (if the filer foresees that he/she won’t be able to fill the taxes by the due date and wants 6 more months to be able to prepare the tax return)
• 4852 : Substitute for Form W-2 (in case you loose the W-2 or the employer doesn’t send it in time for you to fill the tax return).

Filling the form 1040NR-EZ

The most important information that you need to fill in the 1040NR-EZ is:

• identification data (name, address, SSNi, etc)
• wages (field no. 3) : the sum of the wages declared in all the W-2 forms received from the employers (if we didn’t received all the W-2 form, we substitute each of the W-2 that we did not received with a 4852 form. We can do that based on the very last pay stub from the employer that didn’t send the W-2, since this stub also summarizes the wages earned / taxes paid)
• Itemized deductions (total of state and local taxes paid)
• exemption deduction (field no. 11): for 2006 it was $3300 / person
• tax (field no. 15): we find the tax in the tax table at the end of the document containing instructions on how to fill the 1040NR-EZ (in can be downloaded at http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i1040nre.pdf )

1040EZ

Steps:

• Fill in personal identification information
• Filling status: most of the cases is SINGLE NONRESIDENT ALIEN
• Line no.3: fill in the wages (from all W-2 or 4852 forms based on the last pay stub)
• Rewrite the amount on line no.7 and 10
• Line 11: write the total of state and local taxes paid (from all W-2 or 4852 forms based on the last pay stub)
• Line 12 = line 10 - line 11
• Line 13: write 3300
• Line 14 = line 12 – line 13. This is the taxable income
• Line 15: based on the number calculated for line 14, browse the Tax Table found at the end of the PDF document containing instructions for filling 1040NR-EZ. Write the tax amount that needs to be paid corresponding with the taxable income calculated at line 14
• Line 18: write the total federal tax that you paid (from all W-2 or 4852 forms based on the last pay stub)
• Line 22: rewrite amount from line 18
• Line 23 = line 17 – line 22. This is your return
• Line 24: don’t write any account number. IRS sends money through bank transfer only inside US.
• On the second page fill in the information required according with your personal situation.

! Don’t forget to date and sign! If the form is mailed without signature, it’s going to be returned to you in order for you to sign it. This means a delay of several weeks.

Where to send the mail with the tax forms (http://www.irs.gov/file/article/0,,id=105045,00.html)

INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE

Austin, TX 73301-0215

USA

NOTE: this is just a description of my way of filling taxes. I don’t take responsibility for anybody that fills the taxes the way I described.