I am a f1 visa student with no income history and a resident alien, is there a way to get a tax refund?

[lee129you]

i am a f1 visa student, I've been staying here for school since 2008, i got an email about tax refund for international  students from my school. i ran IRS residency test, and turns out i am a resident alien. and i have never worked in US, so i have no income, no SSN, no tax id. does this mean there is no way for me to get any tax refund? 

[LinaJ2018 · Accepted solution]

It depends.  

If you have paid any out of pocket qualified education expenses including tuition, you may qualify for a refundable credit even you have no income.  Enter information in the program and let it calculate our refundable portion.  For more information, see Refundable credit

To enter your education expenses, here are the steps:

• Sign into your account and select Take me to my return 
• At the right upper corner, in the search box, type in 1098t and Enter (Upgrade might be prompted)
• Select Jump to form 1098T 
•  On screen, "Do you want to enter your higher education expenses?" answer Yes. 
• Follow prompts

[lee129you]

i think i might be eligible for the refundable credit, how do i do the whole process though? please help me!

[lee129you]

are you talking about AOTC?

[LinaJ2018]

Yes.  Please see my edited answer above.

[lee129you]

thank you so so much Lina, you're a life saver! i'm following prompts right now and i skipped the enter SSN page, since i don't have one, and i'm typing the info from my 1098t, is SSN going to be necessary again? i'm not sure if i should give up on this or not, since SSN and tax id keeps blocking me. thank you again Lina!