Submitting your J1 Federal Tax return

6 min readFeb 11, 2017

This guide is intended for those who were on a J1 Work & Travel visa in 2016. I’d imagine (but can’t guarantee) the process will be similar in subsequent years.

It’s also sort-of intended for Irish J1 participants — but the guide is probably valid for participants of other nationalities.

Assuming you are owed a refund (rather than owing the IRS), you have three years to file.

First, I better save myself from any legal trouble by stating…

Disclaimer

I am not an accountant, lawyer, US tax expert, attorney etc. I have done my own research into this, and I may have gotten some things wrong. Ultimately, it’s your responsibility to make sure that all forms you submit have been correctly filled out.

Assumptions

I’ve written this guide for the typical Irish J1er. In other words:

You were on the Work & Travel J1 programme (as apposed to the Intern, Au Pair, Camp Counselor, etc. programmes)
You don’t have any dependents.
You earned less than $100,000 on your J1 (if you earned more than this, you should really be hiring an accountant!)
You don’t pass the Green Card Test.
You don’t pass the Substantial Presence Test.
You’re not married to a US citizen.
You didn’t get married on your J1. (Vegas, anyone?)
All of your taxable income was obtained from ‘wages, salaries and tips’. Having multiple jobs is fine.
…and more.

First Step

The first thing you’ve got to do is to obtain a W-2 form from each of your employers. A W-2 form states the amount of income you obtained from that employer, and how much of that income was deducted as taxes.

All employers are legally obliged to send you this form, so don’t be afraid to send them an email asking for it. Your employers must have this form filed by the 31st of January 2017, so you should be asking them for it right now!

Fortunately, most employees seem to have online payroll systems that can deliver this form to you electronically — so you probably won’t have to wait weeks for it to arrive by post.

Do you pass the test?

J1ers who don’t pass the Substantial Presence Test nor the Green Card Test are considered non-resident aliens, for tax purposes. Check out the two links above, and make sure you don’t pass either of the tests.

This is very important. If you do pass either of these tests, you are considered a resident alien for tax purposes. If this is the case for you, stop reading now.

What form do I need?

When you are convinced you are a non-resident alien, go ahead and download the 1040NR-EZ form from the IRS website. While you’re at it, you should download the form’s accompanying instructions and read them. I’ll be referring to these accompanying instructions throughout the rest of the guide.

Aside: US citizens fill out Form 1040 when filing their taxes. We submit Form 1040NR-EZ as we are Non-Residents. The ‘EZ’ component of the form stands for easy, meaning its a simplified version of form 1040NR.

Unfortunately, non-resident aliens are not allowed to file their taxes electronically (as of time of writing), so you will have to print out the form above and submit it by snail mail.

Guiding you through the form

Part 1: Your Details

This is fairly self-explanatory, but there are a few points worth mentioning.

Make sure your name matches the name on your Social Security Card.
The Identifying Number is your Social Security Number.
Don’t enter your US address here — enter the address of wherever you live now.

Part 2: Crunching Numbers

This is the guts of the form. If you go to Page 6 of the form’s instructions, you will see that it goes through each box line-by-line. I can’t stress how important it is to read this. The form’s instructions trumps (pun not-intended) any advice given below.

Line 3: You should enter the amount on Box 1 of your W-2 form. If you worked multiple jobs, enter the sum of the figures in Box 1 of each Form W-2.
Line 4, 5, 6: This is probably $0.
Line 8, 9: Probably $0.
Line 11: This is the total state and local income tax you paid. These figures can be found on your W-2 form(s). See page 11 of the accompanying instructions.
Line 13: Probably $4,050. But, read the instructions form. Generally, you are allowed to claim one exemption. In 2016, the exemption amount is $4,050. This acts like a tax credit.
Line 15: Go to the ‘Tax Table’ section in the instructions form, and find your tax amount.
Line 16: Probably $0.
Line 18a: For most people, you will enter the amount in Box 2 on your Form W-2. Again, if you worked multiple jobs, enter the sum of the figures in Box 2 of each Form W-2.
Lines 18b, 19 and 20: Probably $0.
Line 22 is the amount you are owed. You can compare this number to the estimate given by taxback.com’s online calculator.
On Line 23e, you should specify the address you want your refund cheque sent to.
Line 24: You should enter $0.

Part 3: Other Information

Page 2 of the form contains a set of ten questions labeled A-J.

Most of this is self-explanatory. Instructions for this section can be found on Page 13 of the accompanying instructions. Here are a few pointers:

E: Assuming that, on the the 31st of December, your J1 Visa had expired AND you didn’t have any other valid US Visa AND you were not in the US, you should enter “Not present in U.S. — No U.S. immigration status.” See the form’s instructions for more details.

I: Don’t forget that you may have claimed if you went on a J1 before.

J: Most people won’t be claiming anything here.

Submitting your tax return

What to submit

You might have noticed that your W-2 form comes in three different copies.

Copy B: For Federal tax returns
Copy 2: For state/city/local tax returns
Copy C: To be kept by the individual.

Make sure you include Copy B of all of your W-2 forms (one for each employer) with your filled out Form 1040NR-EZ.

You should also have a look at the Return Checklist on page 16 of the instructions form, to make sure you’re not missing anything.

I would highly recommend taking a picture (or better yet — a scan) of your filled out 1040NR-EZ before sending it off.

Where to submit

The address to send your documents to can be found at this website. I’m not going to include that address here in case it changes in future.

How long will it take?

The IRS state that the refund should be processed within six weeks of the date they receive your return. You can track the status of your refund using Where’s My Refund?.

UPDATE: It has been over 2 months since I filed, so I gave the IRS a call. They insisted it can take up to 6 months to process the refund for non-resident aliens, like ourselves.

Is that it?

Kind of.

While that’s all you have to do to file your federal taxes, you also have to file state taxes, and possibly local taxes. Seeing as this process can vary quite a bit, depending on where you were based on your J1, I’m not going to be guiding you through it — sorry. Google is your friend though.

Also, feel free to leave a comment below when you get your cheque! 😃