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During Wednesday afternoon’s Congress workshop "Nonresident Alien Taxation and Withholding for J-1 Exchange Visitors and F-1 Students," Terri Crowl, Content and Compliance Specialist for Thomson Reuters, discussed a number of issues that affect nonresident aliens in the United States.

This included how to determine if a payee is a nonresident or a resident alien for U.S. tax purposes; special withholding rules for nonresident alien payees; properly documenting and administering various exemptions from tax withholding for nonresident aliens; and appropriately reporting payments to nonresident aliens.

“By understanding there are different rules that apply to many non-immigrant payees, participants can help their organizations increase compliance with those rules, or at least begin a conversation about the current level of compliance and how to improve it,” Crowl told Congress Today before the workshop.

Crowl explained that increased compliance improves outcomes for both the organization and the payee, and can save them both money and reduce their audit exposure. Although she said time restraints prevented her from taking a “deep-dive” into the issues, workshops like hers are important so that attendees can go back to their companies and organizations with “some talking and thinking points” to use themselves or to share with other departments.

“It is important to have systems in place to identify nonresident alien payees and to ensure proper withholding and reporting,” she said.

Attendees said the workshop was "very helpful."

“Our student interns are starting Monday, some of them have F-1 and G-1 visas, so I wanted to familiarize myself with these visas to make sure we’re following federal guidelines,” said Robin Boseman, CPP, Accountant at D.C. Water & Sewer Authority.

Alex Horton, CPP, Controller at Centerfield Media added: “The workshop further reinforced the importance of gathering the pertinent information from employees and documenting everything.”

Additional reporting by Apryl Motley