My wife & I are on F1 visa. Both of us started working on OPT from 08/2011. I need help with tax returns :

1) What form we need to fill for Federal & MA state tax returns?

2) My employer is withholding Social security & medicare taxes from past 10 paychecks .After explaining it should not be withheld, they emailed me 8233(tax exempt), M4(MASSACHUSETTS EMPLOYEE'S WITHHOLDING EXEMPTION CERTIFICATE ) & W4 forms to complete & send back. Is that what I need to do ?

3) We have a 1 year old child as dependent

4) What about the moving expenses ?

5) We started paying our student loan also

6) We bought a car & paid for it in full

Any help would be greatly appreciated !

Thank you

You BOTH need to file separate non-resident alien tax returns (Form 1040NR or 1040NR-EZ PLUS Form 8843). You may or may NOT be able to claim the child; that depends on your home country.

WHAT IS YOUR HOME COUNTRY?

You WILL be able to deduct the student loan INTEREST on your respective tax returns.

You should be able to deduct moving expenses if the move was more than 50 miles AND if you got no reimbursement from the employer OR the reimbursement was taxable income (usually in the form of a signing bonus).

The car is NOT deductible; sorry!

If you want further details, check my profile for my email address and email me.

Thank you AtlantaTaxExpert for the answers!

My home country is India. Before our OPT started , we both worked part time on-campus during studies, & we filed tax returns as married filing jointly?

My home country is India. Is child deductible ?

My employer is withholding Social security & medicare taxes from past 10 paychecks .After explaining it should not be withheld, they emailed me 8233(tax exempt), M4(MASSACHUSETTS EMPLOYEE’S WITHHOLDING EXEMPTION CERTIFICATE ) & W4 forms to complete & send back. Is that what I need to do ?


Thanks

You filed joint return that is you treated yourself as residents of US. So you must pay Social security and medicare tax.
On resident return you can claim your child.

Unless 2011 is your SIXTH year in the U.S. you are both NON-RESIDENTS and you need to file non-resident returns for 2011.

This means you are EXEMPT from FICA (Social Security and Medicare) taxes. Have your employer(s) review IRS Pub 519 (pages 31-57), then ask that they refund the FICA taxes alreay withheld.

Thank you !

We came to US in Aug 2007 for the first time on F1 visa
1) Worked part time as student in 2007, 2008, 2009 & filed returns
2) Did not file for last year as did no work at all

All returns were married filing jointly till now as our school International services advised us to do ( they did not know? ) but now as you saying want to file as married separately. Can we file as separate now on-wards.


Thanks for all the answers. We appreciate it.



Do we need to do amendments for previous years filings.Also they withhold social security taxes & medicare taxes from my wife's paychecks in one of those years for which we did not do anything.

Okay, you filed incorrectly in past years, but file as I stated earlier.