PennPal

Hi all, another Canadian enrolled in a PhD program at a U.S. institution here. My situation is similar to some of the other posters' in that I have a mixture of US and Canadian income: NSERC funding ~20,000 CAD/year. Graduate Assistant-ship ~9,000 USD/year stipend + ~16,000/year Tuition waiver Departmental supplement ~2000 USD/year I am pretty sure that, as with some of you above, my $9000 stipend should count as nontaxable scholarship income, rather than taxable employment income. Although it is reported on a W2 (rather than the $2000 supplement, which is reported on a 1042s), I am not actually doing any work for the department right now (nor will I, for the first two years of my program), so I don't see how this could be considered employment income. Likewise, it seems as though I should be allowed to claim the $16,000 amount as tuition paid, even though it is not me paying it. Nice and simple, so I thought. However, I wasn't so fortunate as some of you here in that the bursar's office at my institution has repeatedly and adamantly refused to fill out a TL11A for me. Having spoken to a CRA agent about the situation, I was told the following things: My institution does not have any legal obligation to complete the form for me (I had hoped maybe they did, under some kind of tax agreement between Canada and the US) so I am really stuck with their refusal. I am recommended against forging ahead and declaring tuition amounts on my 2015 tax return and including official receipts etc as proof of the amounts in lieu of the actual TL11A. Instead, I was recommended to simply not declare any tuition paid at all on my 2015 tax return, and afterward file for an adjustment, including proof of any claimed tuition amounts, and explaining why I was unable to produce a TL11A. The CRA will then, I suppose, make a decision about my individual case. Of course, the tax deadline having come, I am stuck with filing my return sans tuition amounts and filing an adjustment later. I'm not in love with the outcome here, though. For one, this seems very labour-intensive (although I do have 10 years to make adjustments, I suppose I could try filing them all at once, at some later date). I'm also concerned because it does not some to be a guarantee that I will be able to convince the CRA my my tuition is really tuition and my scholarship income is really scholarship income, etc. Has anybody else encountered this problem? I thought I should post my experience here so that people can see it is not necessarily a given that a US university will comply with a request to compete a TL11A.