Tax & Legal Assistance

Please note that the information on this page has been provided by the relevant tax authorities. Neither the GSC nor any branch of the ASSU is able to give out any tax advice. Students with specific questions are advised to contact a tax professional.

The links and tax information on this page are primarily relevant for U.S. students. The Bechtel International Center has very good tax information for international students and scholars. In addition, the center plans to hold tax information sessions for international students in March and April of 2007.

Filing Your Taxes

Students can take advantage of many free online services to file their taxes. Just like last year, no vouchers are required.

Federal Taxes
The IRS has a partnership agreement with Free File Alliance, LLC to provide free online tax filing for eligible taxpayers. Information on how to file your taxes online for free is available at the IRS Free File Home Page.
California State Taxes
The California Franchise Tax Board offers free online filing of state income taxes through CalFile for eligible tax payers.
Other State Taxes
If you need tax information for another state, this Yahoo State Tax Directory has links to official state tax web sites.

IRS Question and Answer Sessions

The 2007 sessions have not yet been scheduled.

These sessions help provide answers to questions such as:

tax implications of your fellowships, scholarships, and grants
tax-advantaged savings opportunities
education tax credits and deductions

These sessions are for individual tax questions only and are not meant for business tax questions.

General Tax Information for Students

We all know that calculating your federal income tax is complicated. This information is meant to help you better see how the income tax works and how it applies to students. Hopefully this will help you save time filing your taxes and help you to better plan how federal income taxes will affect you.

Some people are confused about what makes the income tax so complicated. The progressive rate structure with all the various brackets is not really the complicated part. If you know your taxable income, you simply need to use a tax table to look up how much income tax you should pay. The complicated part is trying to figure out how much of your income is “taxable.”

The IRS realizes that determining what income is taxable is difficult and has provided a helpful guide for students called Taxable Income for Students. For a very detailed description of what income is taxable see IRS Publication 525. The following is a brief summary of the general principles; for any specifics you should refer to the IRS site (the student guide has some examples involving fellowships).

The following kinds of income (often received by students) are generally taxable:

Hourly Wages (pay for grading papers, hourly RA work, tutoring, etc.)
Salary (fixed amount for the quarter for serving as RA, TA, etc.)
Awards (sometimes called scholarship prizes, any money received as an award)
Fellowships, Scholarships, and Grants above the cost of tuition and required fees
Investment Income (interest payments, dividends, capital gains)

Note that only the amount that a fellowship exceeds tuition and required fees is taxable. See IRS Publication 970 for more information on how much of your scholarship or fellowship is taxable. Also note that only the first two categories, hourly wages and salary are considered "earned income".

The sum of your income from all sources is called your total income. You then adjust your income for student loan interest paid, IRA contributions, and a few other items to give you your adjusted gross income. You are then allowed to subtract exemptions, deductions, and tax credits from the adjusted gross income to give your taxable income. It is the taxable income number that you use to look up your tax liability on the IRS tax table.

Even a brief summary of the exemptions and deductions rules could be seen as tax advice, so see IRS Publication 501 for more information. The IRS also has a page dedicated to providing information about tax credits. There are tax credits for child and dependent care expenses IRS Publication 503, education IRS Publication 970, retirement savings contributions IRS Publication 590, children IRS Publication 972, and several others. There is also an earned income credit IRS Publication 596 that is especially valuable for students with children.

We hope that this information has helped you to better understand the U.S. income tax. For answers to specific questions, try starting at the IRS web page Tax Information for Students. Because the information is targeted at students, it is most likely to have the answers to your questions. If you still haven't found what you are looking for, try IRS Publication 17 which is a very large publication that attempts to put nearly all the rules in one place. If you need to talk to a real person about your taxes you can call one of the local IRS Taxpayer Assistance Centers or go to a Volunteer Income Tax Assistance Site (VITA). The volunteers at VITA sites do not prepare returns involving self employment income, rental income or other complicated returns. However, they can handle returns with bank interest, stock dividends and even simple stock transactions. VITA sites normally open the beginning of February (for more information call 800-829-1040).

Other Helpful Links

Federal and State Tax Withholding

Stanford employees must declare their federal and state withholding allowance by submitting a W-4/DE-4. This is easy to do by going to Axess and selecting the "Employee Information" tab. There you can edit W4 and DE4 information, view W2 tax forms, set up direct deposit, and view pay statements. Withholdings are important because not having enough withheld may leave you with a large tax bill in April and if you owe too much, you have to also pay a penalty. Federal and state withholdings will show up on your pay statement as "Fed Withholding" and "CA Withholding" and the amounts depend on how much you make and how many allowances you claim. Note that if you had a refund of all federal income tax withheld the previous year and expect to again have no tax liability, you can claim exemption from withholding.

The other taxes that usually show up on pay statements (but not for most students) are "Fed MED/EE" (Medicare), "Fed OASDI/EE" (Social Security), and "CA Vol Dis/EE" (Short-Term Disability). Students are exempt from these payroll taxes as long as they are enrolled at least half-time and are not in a benefits-eligible job. Questions about tax withholding and payroll taxes should be directed to the Stanford Controller's Office.

Legal Counseling

ASSU legal counseling

Would you like suggestions for fighting a traffic ticket? The ASSU Legal Counseling Office can give you a legal opinion on various issues like settling an insurance claim or guidance in filing for divorce or separation. ASSU legal counseling is strictly confidential and free.

The GSC is a member of the National Association of Graduate-Professional Students.
As a Stanford graduate or professional student, you have access to their job bank and other member services.