When you began work as a UH employee in nonimmigrant classification, your department had you complete a Foreign National Tax Information packet for the UH Tax Department to determine what tax benefits you may be eligible for based on your nonimmigrant classification and tax treaties with your country of nationality. 

Taxes normally deducted from a paycheck include:

• Fed withholding (federal income tax)
• Fed Med/EE (federal Medicare tax)*
• Fed OASDI/EE (federal social security tax)*

Also known as FICA tax.

You may or may not be exempted from paying one or more of these taxes. The UH Tax Department will make such a determination and your paycheck will reflect any tax exemption you may be eligible for.

Once your tax exemptions (if any) have been determined, you will receive an email from the Office of Tax Accounting to your UH account, asking you to review your tax information. It is very important that you watch for this email and respond promptly. If you fail to respond, you will be taxed as if you were a United States citizen.

Tax Refund

If taxes you were exempted from have been deducted from your paycheck, the following is how you may request a refund:

Refund of Federal Withholding

You will request these taxes be paid back to you when submitting your tax return during the first quarter of a given year (i.e., wages and taxes from 2019 are reported on the tax return filed in 2020).

FICA Withholding

You are responsible for submitting the request to be refunded for the FICA tax directly to the IRS. Additional information is available here.

Contact

For specific questions about your tax benefits, please contact Foreign National Tax for UH: tax@uh.edu 

Web: UH Tax Department