Form 8843: Fill & Download for Free

If you were in the US on an F, M, J or Q visa and had no income in those years, then I would not be too concerned about not filing the 8843. You could potentially not be able to claim exemption from substantial presence for those years, but if you had no income, it would not matter. Since you have been in the US for 5 years now, then you no longer qualify for the student exclusion from substantial presence anyway due to now being a long term resident, so you will probably be filing a Form 1040 now to report and pay tax on your income and the 8843 is no longer required.

Yes, but if you did not file Form 8843 when you filed Form 1040NR, you will need to file Form 1040X to amend your previous filing. File the Form 1040X along with a new Form 1040NR (marked “AS AMENDED” on each page), the corrected Form 8843, and a copy of the originally filed Form 1040NR (marked “AS ORIGINALLY FILED” on each page).If you have not yet filed Form 1040NR for the year in question, you can simply file the appropriate return as a delayed return with Form 8843 attached. You may be subject to penalties for late filing if you owe tax. If you are not required to file a return, you can just file Form 8843 late. Make sure you use the form for the correct tax year (you can get past-year forms from the IRS website).You cannot use Form 8843 to exclude days in which you were present in the United States as a professional athlete or in the United States for medical treatment for a condition which arose while you were in the United States, unless the form was filed in a timely manner. However, a late filing of Form 8843 can be used to exclude such days for the purpose of the substantial presence test if you were entitled to exclude them for any other reason. There may be other consequences of a late return; some elections that are available to taxpayers to reduce their tax must be taken prior to the due date of the return; a late filer is not permitted to make any of these elections but must accept the “default” election in all such situations. I’m not sure how many of these apply to Form 1040NR filers, however.

My situation was the same. I signed the form 8843 and filed the NREZ 1040. As long they see you have the NREZ form filed, they will give you the refund in spite of you signing 8843. I received my tax refund without any issues. If however, they first see your signed 8843 and assume you have no NREZ filed (without looking at the other forms), you may have some problems, but the probability for that to happen is very small.