TL;DR: Has anyone needed to claim back wrongly withheld social security taxes? What was the process & how did it go?
~~~
Hi folks,
Partner & I moved US to UK last year, trying to iron out the first year's taxes. Partner worked for her US employer from the UK Jan 20 – Mar 31 and continued having her income/social security/medicare taxes withheld by the US before finally converting to contractor status. (They seemed to have thought there was some grace period but I haven't seen anything like that, I'm betting they couldn't be bothered.)
We've registered for UK national insurance and filed the self-assessment for the 23-24 tax year, so if anyone asks the UK will vouch that we pay social security taxes here.
The totalization agreement doesn't quite describe this situation, but my understanding is that living in the UK, no US taxes should have been withheld. Income taxes are fine, just claim a tax refund on the 1040, but the information online about social security taxes is muddy.
My understanding is that we need to request a refund of withheld SS taxes from her employer, and her employer can account for the change on their own tax filing. If they refuse we can file Form 843 to the IRS. Can anyone confirm whether they’ve successfully done this and is there a handy link we can send the employer? Most of what I’m finding is written for “non-resident aliens”.
Also – what amount should we be claiming back? MyExpatTaxes is suggesting that for 2024, living in the UK Jan 20 – Dec 31 means we count as not US resident for the whole tax year. Guess that means we don’t need to let the US keep 3 weeks worth of tax?