I am on F-1 OPT and my employer withheld FICA, but I have been in the U.S. fewer than five calendar years. Is that likely wrong?
I am an engineer from India working on OPT after graduating, and payroll withheld Social Security and Medicare taxes from the first paycheck. That might be correct, but after reading the IRS foreign-student pages I am worried the employer may have ignored the nonresident alien student rules and just ran me through ordinary domestic payroll. I have only been in the U.S. for three calendar years in F-1 status.
I do not want to create conflict with payroll if I am misunderstanding the rule. But if FICA should generally not have been withheld yet, I want to know before more quarters pass and the refund file becomes more tedious.
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