Services for International Students: Employment and Taxes

Applying for on campus employment:

Student employment at CWU

As a CWU matriculated international student in F-1 immigration status you are permitted to work on campus for up to 20 hours per week when school is in session and full-time during the school breaks if you are pre-registered for the following quarter.

You will need to obtain a Social Security Card in order to receive a paycheck from CWU. This Social Security Card will provide you with your Social Security number. This number is given to each applicant only once, the first time you apply for a Social Security card. Once received, this Social Security number is your permanent number. If you lose the card, a replacement card can be applied for and issued. It will contain your original Social Security number. You will use this number for all on campus employment at CWU and for any other U.S. employment.

You may wish to use this number as your CWU identification number. In order to use your Social Security number instead of the CWU number that has been issued to you automatically when you began studies at CWU you must apply for this change at the CWU Registrar's Office.

To apply for a Social Security Card (number) you will need to apply in person at the nearest Social Security Office. There is no Social Security office in Ellensburg. The nearest office is in Yakima, Washington. You may also apply in Seattle. Please visit the Social Security Office Online.

You will need to complete a Social Security application form that will ask for your mother's maiden (before marriage) surname. In addition, you will have to present to Social Security representative:

• a birth certificate or record of your birth
• a passport which is at least one year old
• a second piece of photo identification, like your CWU Connection Card or
• a Washington State Driver's License or Washington State I.D.
• Your I-20 signed for on-campus work permission by the ISA

Once a year during fall quarter a representative from the Yakima Social Security office comes to the CWU campus. If you have the required documents, you will be able to apply for your Social Security card at this time. Otherwise, it will be your responsibility to bring your documents to either the Yakima or Seattle Social Security office. See the ISA for a Social Security application and directions to a Social Security office.

Note:

International students are not subject to Social Security income if the income earned is from lawful employment and goes to support your education. You should advise your CWU employer not to take out Social Security taxes from your paycheck. If Social Security taxes have been withheld, there is a special form you will need to fill out to get a Social Security refund check.

All persons who work in the U.S. are required to complete a U.S. governmental called the I-9 form. Please see the ISA prior to employment to complete the required documentation. You will need to present to the ISA:

• your passport which contains your F-1 student visa stamp and the I-94 white card
• your Social Security number
• Your I-20 which has been stamped by the ISA for on-campus work authorization and which shows the completion date for your program of study

U.S. federal Income Taxes:

If you receive money earned in the U.S. or a scholarship/tuition waiver from a U.S. school, this money is considered U.S. income and is subject to federal income tax by the U.S. government. The Internal Revue Service (IRS) is the federal agency, which is responsible for federal income taxes.

The tax year is from January 1 - December 31st each year. Some of this earned U.S. income may be non-taxable (exempt) by tax treaties the U.S. has established with many countries. Tax treaties are specific to each of these tax treaty agreements. The effect of these treaties is to reduce the amount of income that is considered taxable by the U.S. government.

Services for International Students provides a tax workshop on the CWU Ellensburg campus each year before the income tax filing due date, April 15th. Tax consultants will be available to answer tax questions and to help with instructions for filling out the tax forms. The staff in ISS is not qualified to advise on tax issues so international students are advised to attend this tax workshop or to seek services of a professional tax consultant.

All international students must file one U.S. tax form. The form 8843 indicates to the U.S. federal government that you are an international student and considered a non-resident of the U.S. for income tax purposes. This is important if you also may have earned income from outside the U.S. during the tax year. If you do not file this form, the out-of-country income may be taxable.

Other forms related to U.S. income taxes:

W-4 The form you fill out when you accept on campus employment.
W-2 The form will be sent to you by your employer(s) sometime in the January of the year following the previous January 1 -December 31st income tax year. It shows how much money you earned in each positiion you held during the tax year, how much tax money was withheld for the federal government income tax, and how much Social Security tax, if any, was withheld. Remember, non-residents are not subject to Social Security withholding, so if money was withheld, you should talk to your employer about getting it back.1099-INT This form will be sent to you by your bank. It shows the amount of interest income you earned last year. While U.S. residents are taxed for this income, non-residents are not subject to taxes on interest. Please bring this form with you to the tax workshop because you may need to indicate the interest earned on your tax form.1042-S This form will, in most cases, be sent to you by CWU if you received a scholarship or graduate assistantship. If you received a tuition waiver you will receive a letter from ISS. The scholarship or waiver which went for tuition or books is non-taxable income. However, if your scholarship included money for room and board, this income is taxable and must be reported.
1040NR or 1040NR-EZ You will need one of these forms to file a federal tax return. The latter is a simplified version of the 1040NR and will be what most of you will use.

Helpful IRS links

Applying for off campus employment:

The following two situations for off-campus employment require immigration approval. If approved, immigration will issue an Employment Authorization Document (EAD), granting permission to work off campus for one year (or the completion of program of study, whichever comes first).

Severe Economic Hardship:

If after you have been an international student for at least one full academic year (nine months of study as an F-1 student) and your source of financial support has severely changed, you can apply (for a fee) to immigration to receive permission to work off campus based on extreme financial need.

Examples of a change in your financial support might be a major illness or death of your financial sponsor; a severe change in your country's currency evaluation relative to the U.S. dollar; a major natural disaster in your home country.

Since you were required to present sufficient financial support prior to receiving your I-20 as part of your admission to CWU as an international student, immigration is very strict in granting employment authorization based on Severe Economic Hardship. It is your responsibility to prove to immigration that circumstances have changed since your admission and that without permission to work off campus, you will not be able to complete your program of study.

See the ISA for the guidelines and immigration application procedure for off-campus work based on Severe Economic Hardship.

Special Student Relief:

If you have been an international student studying in the U.S. since June 10, 1998 and your source of funding comes from one of the following countries:

• Indonesia
• South Korea
• Malaysia
• Thailand
• Philippines

You may apply to immigration for off-campus work permission. Should you be granted permission by immigration to work off-campus based on the Special Student Relief benefit, you may also take less than a full course of study and still be considered to be in lawful F-1 student status.

See the ISA for the guidelines and immigration application procedure for off-campus work based on Special Student Relief.

Any questions? Please go here.