Form 8843: who must file and when

What the form is for

Form 8843 is a statement, not a tax return. It does not compute any tax. Its job is to tell the IRS that you are counting fewer days than you were physically in the United States when you run the substantial presence test, and to say which of the permitted reasons you rely on. Publication 519 explains the underlying idea in its section on days of presence: a day counts if you were physically in the country at any time during it, except for a short list of exceptions. Several of those exceptions, but not all, come with a paperwork condition, and Form 8843 is that paperwork.

The word "exempt" trips people up here. The publication is blunt that an exempt individual is not someone exempt from U.S. tax. It means a person in one of the listed visa categories whose days of presence are disregarded when deciding residency. A student can be an exempt individual and still owe tax on wages; the point is only that those days do not push the student toward resident status.

The four filing triggers

The publication lists exactly four situations in which you must file a fully completed Form 8843 if you exclude days. First, you were unable to leave the country as planned because of a medical condition or problem that arose while you were here. Second, you were temporarily here as a teacher or trainee on a J or Q visa. Third, you were temporarily here as a student on an F, J, M or Q visa. Fourth, you were a professional athlete competing in a charitable sports event.

The tool above follows that list. Choose a reason and it tells you whether the form is required on that basis. The foreign government-related category (A and G visas) is worth a note. Those individuals are exempt individuals, and under the publication none of their days count, but the publication’s Form 8843 list names only the four categories above, so the tool does not tell you the form is required on that basis. Check the form instructions if you are in that group. The commuter, transit and crew exceptions likewise carry no Form 8843 requirement in the publication.

Where it goes and by when

Attach Form 8843 to your income tax return for the year. If you do not have to file a return, send the form by itself to the Department of the Treasury, Internal Revenue Service Center, Austin, TX 73301-0215. In both cases the deadline is the due date for filing Form 1040-NR, which the publication explains in its chapter on filing. For wage earners without extensions that is generally mid-April of the following year, but confirm the date for your year in the Form 1040-NR instructions.

A common situation is a student with no U.S. income at all. That person has no return to file, but the exclusion of days still depends on the form, so the standalone mailing route exists for exactly this case. Families matter too: the publication includes immediate family members of exempt teachers, trainees and students in the exempt categories. Each person who is excluding days has to account for them.

What happens if you miss the deadline

The consequence depends on the category, and the publication is precise about it. If you are required to file Form 8843 and do not do so on time, you cannot exclude days of presence as a professional athlete or because of a medical condition that arose while you were here. For those two categories the late form defeats the exclusion. There is a safety valve: the rule does not apply if you can show by clear and convincing evidence that you took reasonable actions to become aware of the filing requirements and significant steps to comply with them.

Notice what the publication does not say. It does not attach the same express loss-of-exclusion sentence to the student and teacher-or-trainee categories, even though it requires the form for them. That is a reading of the publication’s text, not a promise about how the IRS will treat a late student form, so treat the filing as required and do it on time. Nothing in the publication suggests the form is optional for a student who wants to exclude days.

Form 8843 versus Form 8840

These two forms are often confused because both are filed to avoid being treated as a resident. Form 8843 documents days you are allowed to disregard. Form 8840, the closer connection exception statement, is for someone who does meet the substantial presence test but claims a closer connection to a foreign country. You can need neither, one, or in unusual cases both. The 8840 rules are covered on their own page, and the five-year student limit is explained on the F-1 exempt individual page.

If you want to see how excluded days change the weighted three-year count, the substantial presence test calculator runs the 31-day and 183-day arithmetic. This page deals only with the filing requirement that sits next to that arithmetic.

A worked scenario

Suppose a graduate student on an F-1 visa is in her second calendar year in the country, earned nothing in the United States, and spent the whole year here. Under the publication she is an exempt individual as a student, so her days do not count toward residency. She has no return to file, so she completes Form 8843 and mails it to the Austin address by the Form 1040-NR due date. If instead she had a stipend and filed Form 1040-NR, she would attach the form to that return.

Now suppose a visitor on a B-2 visa broke a leg and could not fly for three weeks. Those days can be excluded as a medical condition, but only if the visitor files the form, and the form must be on time. The publication adds limits: you cannot exclude days if you stayed beyond a reasonable period for making arrangements to leave, if you came back for treatment of a condition that arose on a previous stay, or if the condition existed before you arrived and you knew about it.

Sources

• IRS Publication 519, U.S. Tax Guide for Aliens (2025): Days of Presence in the United States; Medical condition; Exempt individual; Form 8843. Read November 2, 2026.

Edition read: Publication 519 (2025), U.S. Tax Guide for Aliens, for use in preparing 2025 returns. Dollar figures on this page are the ones printed in that edition; check the current publication and form instructions for your tax year. This page summarizes the publication and does not replace it.