Do I have to file Form 8843 if I earned no US income?
Yes. Form 8843 is a statement about presence, not about income, so a year with no earnings and no tax still needs one. The form's job is to take days spent in the United States under a student, teacher or trainee category out of the residency day-count. If nothing is filed, there is nothing on the record claiming that exclusion, and the days sit in the count like anyone else's. Students who assume a nil position removes the obligation are the group who most often discover the problem years later, once the day-count has already tipped.
Does my child on a dependent visa file their own Form 8843?
Dependants are covered in their own right, so each person whose days need excluding files a statement of their own. A spouse and each child are separate individuals in the day-count, and one form in the visa holder's name does nothing for the rest of the household. This matters most where the family's time in the United States runs longer than the visa holder's own assignment, or where a child later applies for status in their own name and the earlier years have to be explained. We file the household together and keep the presence records in one place.
I filed my US return and forgot Form 8843, what now?
The statement can still be put on the record after the return has gone in; it is not a box that closes at the filing deadline and disappears. What changes is the weight the supporting material has to carry. A claim made with the return is read alongside it. A claim made later stands on its own documents: the visa category, the dates of entry and exit, the enrolment or appointment letters for each year. We assemble that file first and then file, so the exclusion arrives supported rather than asserted.
Does Form 8843 still apply after I switch to work authorisation?
The exclusion attaches to the category you were present under, not to the calendar year as a whole, so a change of status part-way through a year splits the analysis. Days under the exempt category may still be excluded; days after the change generally are not, and they go into the count. This is the point at which somebody who has filed the statement without thinking for several years needs to look at it properly, because the same form can be right for part of a year and wrong for the rest of it.
What happens if I never file Form 8843 as a student?
The days stop being excluded, and the day-count is what decides US tax residency. A student who becomes a US tax resident by default is taxed on worldwide income rather than US income, and picks up foreign-account reporting on the accounts kept at home: a savings account, a family deposit, a mutual fund holding. Nothing about the person's life has changed. Only the residency test has been answered differently, because nobody answered it. Reconstructing the years afterwards is possible, and it is slower and dearer than filing was.
Do I file Form 8843 for every year I was in the US?
One statement covers one tax year, so a stay spanning several years produces several forms. Each year stands on its own facts: the category you were present under, the days in the country, and the institution or programme behind them. A gap in the middle of a run of years is the shape that causes trouble later, because the exclusion for the missing year then has to be argued from records rather than read off a filed form. Keeping the sequence complete is cheaper than repairing it.
What is a double tax treaty and what does it actually do?
It is an agreement between two countries that divides up the right to tax. Article by article it decides which country taxes employment income, dividends, interest, royalties, pensions, property and business profits — and where both may tax, it caps what the source country can withhold and tells the other to give credit. It also breaks residence ties and opens a government-to-government channel for disputes. What it never does is apply itself: a treaty position is claimed. See our treaty work.
Do I get credit for all of the foreign tax I paid?
Only up to your own country's tax on that same income, and only for tax you were legally obliged to pay. Two consequences follow. Living somewhere that taxes you more heavily than your residence country does leaves an excess that becomes a carryover rather than a refund. And withholding suffered above the treaty rate is not creditable — the route back to that money is a refund claim in the country that took it. See claiming the credit.
