international student tax deduction while trading
So, my question is what is the limit below which I don't have to pay taxes while trading. I just invested $10. Do I have to pay taxes for this too? what are the slabs? Any income is subject to tax. That said, investing $10 will probably not generate much of income, even at the discount brokers most of it will be wasted on commissions... I am also having an assistantship. So is holding two sources of income legitimate? Thanks You can have as many sources of income as you want. Working is what is restricted when you're on a student visa. As long as you don't open a business as a day trader or start working for someone trading stocks - you're fine.
"Worksheets/ Documentation: (From my experience filing my business deductions through several tax preparers.) Keep all your calculations, but only submit the calculations and worksheets requested by the tax form. Most travel deductions are just a category total. If the IRS wants more info, it will ask for it. Information from the book Home Business Tax Deductions (from Nolo) (2012): Traveling with kids: In chapter 9 (""Leaving Town: Business Travel""), in the section ""Taking People With You"", it specifically discusses your situation. Paraphrasing, it says that you can deduct the amount any eligible expenses would have cost you if you were traveling without your kids. So, you can deduct the cost the smaller hotel room that you and your wife would have normally rented if you were alone.  How your side trips affect your business deductions: According to the book, since you spent 50% or more of your time on business activities while traveling in the U.S.: Deducting meals shared with your kids: You can deduct meals as either entertainment or travel expenses.  I would recommend you buy one of Nolo's books on deductions, as it goes into much more detail than I do here." You have two options for deducting childcare expenses in the US. Both are discussed in Publication 503.  You can claim the Childcare Tax Credit using Form 2441, which has instructions here. First, you can enroll in a dependent care FSA.  You enroll in this through your employer; either you or your spouse can.  $5000 can be deducted pre-tax from your paycheck to pay for childcare this way.  This does not have income limits. Second, you can claim a credit based on expenses up to $3000 per child, up to two children ($6000 total), for the Child Care Tax Credit.  This is combinable with the FSA, only for the last $1000 if you have 2+ children (so $6000 total between the two).  That has income limits to claim over 20% of the credit; so if you are in the 25% bracket, you will only get to claim 20% of the total, either $200 if you have an FSA or $1200 if you do not. Both spouses must work full time or have other qualifying details (such as being a full time student) in order to qualify for the credit; see publication 503 above for more information. "There is actually a restriction on how high a wage they can pay you. There didn't use to be, but now it has to be reasonable for the work you are doing, so they can't pay you $100/hr while other people doing the same work get minimum wage. You might ask why on earth a parent would want to pay a child way more than they're worth? The salary is tax deductible to the company. Then the child pays their ""expenses"" - hockey fees and equipment, field trips, birthday presents for their friends and so on - out of the money the company paid them.  They also save for their post-secondary education. The rest of the family budget now has a little more room, and the parents can lower their own salaries if they have expensive children. This means more net money in the company and less total income tax paid by the family for the same total income. My concern is that if your parents don't know whether or not you must be paid minimum wage (you must, there's no family exemption) then they also don't know whether you should have EI deducted (probably not) and various other special cases like eligibility for summer student subsidies. The firm's accountant should be able to help with these things and the company should know all this. It's not the role of a 14 year old to ask the Internet how to run a business, the business owners should know it." "Bernie: From what I read, I thought it was something like a fixed % on each.  You are right, there does need to be an enforcement agency, however, I do not believe it has to be government.  I think SROs like FINRA and SEC need to exist. However, there is no reason to believe that they couldn't exist without government.  Please don't even get started on Kansas. Trust me I know it far too well. I do not like Brownback, but his ""tax experiment"" was by no means what he was claiming/republicans claim.  He lowered taxes (sounds great) on businesses (wrong policy) mainly LLCs and LPs. While it was nice for some farmers and smaller business owners to not have to pay those taxes. However, there was an actual increase is KS sales tax from 6.15% to 6.5% which will obviously further disincentive buying. It wasn't much of a detaxation for regular people.  Here is what I do not understand, if you are going to stimulate growth, it should be done with the consumers. The consumers are what creates the demand for business products/services. I've always been a proponent of expanding the standard deduction, perhaps even adding back county and local sales tax deductions (or other regressive taxes), etc.  To all of my knowledge, I don't know of really any big deregulation they have done here. They did not shut down schools, there were schools that had to at some points but that option on the table but I do not believe any ever did.   Since the DOE has been created, test scores have virtually been flat despite increasing education spending nationwide by 4-5x.  My high school spent tens of thousands of dollars on Macbook Pros and iPads the same year they started having these ""big"" paper shortages. The students screwed around on the computers and tablets, we didn't use them for anything, and besides even if we did. Studies show that using them doesn't really help anyway. Schools/school boards do not know how to appropriate funds whatsoever.  There is no reason to believe that increased school funding helps students learn any more than others. In fact more funding per student goes to a lot of inner city schools than rural in the state of KS and they actually school a slight negative return.  I agree, and I will if become rich enough to first sustain myself I will, or perhaps I will move to Peter Thiel's seasteading island" Under what section do I declare my profits when I pay tax? You have to declare this as income from other source and pay tax as per tax brackets. I'm from India and have been trading in binary options for a while now Trading in India on binary options is illegal. If you are using Forex from India for trading, this is not allowed as per Foreign Exchange Management Act. This is taxed as ordinary income. See the IRC Sec 988(a)(1). The exclusion you're talking about (the $200) is in the IRC Sec 988(e)(2), but you'll have to read the Treasury Regulations on this section to see if and how it can apply to you. Since you do this regularly and for profit (i.e.: not a personal transaction), I'd argue that it doesn't apply. "I'm in a similar situation. First, a 529 plan can be use for ""qualifying"" international schools.  There are 336 for 2015, which includes many well known schools but also excludes many schools, especially lower level or vocational schools and schools in non-English speaking countries. I ran 3 scenarios to see what the impact would be if you invested $3000 a year for 14 years in something tracking the S&P 500 Index: For each of these scenarios, I considered 3 cases: a state with 0% income tax, a state with the median income tax rate of 6% for the 25% tax bracket, and California with an income tax rate of 9.3% for the 25% tax bracket. California has an addition 2.5% penalty on unqualified distributions.  Additionally, tax deductions taken on contributions that are part of unqualified distributions will be viewed as income and that portion of the distribution will be taxed as such at the state level. Vanguard's 500 Index Portfolio has a 10 year average return of 7.63%.  Vanguard's S&P 500 Index fund has a 10 year average return of 7.89% before tax and 7.53% after taxes on distributions. Use a 529 as intended: Use a 529 but do not use as intended: Invest in a S&P 500 Index fund in a taxable account: Given similar investment options, using a 529 fund for something other than education is much worse than having an investment in a mutual fund in a taxable account, but there's also a clear advantage to using a 529 if you know with certainty you can use it for qualified expenses.  Both the benefits for correct use of a 529 and the penalties for incorrect use increase with state tax rates. I live in a state with no income tax so the taxable mutual fund option is closer to the middle between correct and incorrect use of a 529.  I am leaning towards the investment in a taxable account." Depends on the countries and their rules about moving money across the border,  but in this case that appears entirely reasonable. Of course it would be a gamble unless you can predict the future values of currency better than most folks; there is no guarantee that the exchange rate will move in any particular direction. I have no idea whether any tax is due on profit from currency arbitrage.