General Instructions

Table of Contents

Purpose of Form

Use Form 1042 to report the following.

  • The tax withheld on certain income of foreign persons, including nonresident aliens, foreign partnerships, foreign corporations, foreign estates, and foreign trusts.

  • The section 5000C 2% excise tax due on specified Federal procurement payments.

Publicly traded partnerships (section 1446 withholding tax).   For purposes of reporting on Form 1042, a publicly traded partnership (PTP) must withhold section 1446 tax on distributions of effectively connected income (ECI) to its foreign partners. A nominee that receives a distribution of ECI from a PTP and is treated as the withholding agent must use Form 1042 to report the tax withheld. For this purpose, a nominee is a domestic person holding an interest in the PTP on behalf of one or more foreign partners. For more information, see Regulations section 1.1446-4 and Pub. 515, Withholding of Tax on Nonresident Aliens and Foreign Entities.

Who Must File

Every withholding agent or intermediary (see definitions next) who receives, controls, has custody of, disposes of, or pays any fixed or determinable annual or periodical income must file an annual return for the preceding calendar year on Form 1042. Also, any PTP or nominee making a distribution of ECI under section 1446 must file Form 1042 for the preceding calendar year.

You must file Form 1042 if any of the following applies.

  • You are required to file Form(s) 1042-S (whether or not any tax was withheld or was required to be withheld). File Form 1042 even if you file Forms 1042-S electronically.

  • You pay gross investment income to foreign private foundations that are subject to tax under section 4948(a).

  • You pay any foreign person specified Federal procurement payments.

Withholding Agent

Any person required to withhold tax is a withholding agent. A withholding agent may be an individual, trust, estate, partnership, corporation, nominee (under section 1446), government agency, association, or tax-exempt foundation, whether domestic or foreign.

Liability for tax.   As a withholding agent, you are personally liable for any tax required to be withheld. If you fail to withhold and the foreign payee fails to satisfy its U.S. tax liability, then both you and the foreign person are liable for tax, as well as interest and any applicable penalties.

  The applicable tax will be collected only once. If the foreign person satisfies its U.S. tax liability, you are not liable for the tax but remain liable for any interest and penalties for failure to withhold.

Intermediary

An intermediary is a person who acts as a custodian, broker, nominee, or otherwise as an agent for another person, regardless of whether that other person is the beneficial owner of the amount paid, a flow-through entity, or another intermediary.

Qualified intermediary (QI).   A QI is an intermediary that is a party to a withholding agreement with the IRS. An entity must indicate its status as a QI on a Form W-8IMY submitted to a withholding agent.

  For information on a QI withholding agreement, see:

Withholding foreign partnership (WP) or withholding foreign trust (WT).   A WP or WT is a foreign partnership or trust that has entered into a withholding agreement with the IRS in which it agrees to assume primary withholding responsibility for all payments that are made to it for its partners, beneficiaries, or owners. For information on these withholding agreements, see Rev. Proc. 2003-64, Appendix 1 and Appendix 2. Also see Rev. Proc. 2004-21 and Rev. Proc. 2005-77.

Nonqualified intermediary (NQI).   An NQI is any intermediary that is not a U.S. person and that is not a QI.

Qualified securities lender (QSL).   A QSL is a foreign financial institution that is a bank, custodian, broker-dealer, or clearing organization subject to regulatory supervision in its home jurisdiction and that is:

  1. Regularly engaged in the business of borrowing securities of U.S. corporations and lending such securities to unrelated customers; and

  2. Subject to audit by the IRS under section 7602 or, in the case of a QI, an external auditor.

  For further information about QSL status and the withholding requirements for substitute dividend payments, see Notice 2010-46, 2010-24 I.R.B. 757, available at  
www.irs.gov/irb/2010-24_IRB/ar09.html.

Where and When To File

Mail Form 1042 by March 15, 2013, to:

Ogden Service Center 
P.O. Box 409101 
Ogden, UT 84409 

Use Form 1042-T to transmit paper Forms 1042-S.

Extension of time to file.   If you need more time to file Form 1042, you may submit Form 7004, Application for Automatic Extension of Time To File Certain Business Income Tax, Information, and Other Returns.

  Form 7004 does not extend the time for payment of tax.

Additional Information

For details on the withholding of tax, see Pub. 515. You can get Pub. 515 by calling 1-800-TAX-FORM (1-800-829-3676) or by downloading it from IRS.gov. Click on “Forms and Pubs” and then on “Publication Number.”

Need Assistance?

If you need help completing Form 1042, call 267-941-1000 (not a toll-free number) from 6:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. Eastern time or write to:  

Internal Revenue Service  
International Section  
Philadelphia, PA 19255-0725

Income Tax Withholding on Wages, Pensions, Annuities, and Certain Other Deferred Income

Use Form 941, Employer’s QUARTERLY Federal Tax Return, to report income tax withheld and social security and Medicare taxes on wages paid to a nonresident alien employee.

Use Form 945, Annual Return of Withheld Federal Income Tax, to report income tax withheld under section 3405 from pensions, annuities, and certain other deferred income paid to a nonresident alien individual. However, if the recipient has elected under section 3405(a)(2) or (b)(2) not to have withholding under section 3405, these payments are subject to withholding under section 1441 and the tax withheld must be reported using Forms 1042 and 1042-S.

Use Schedule H (Form 1040), Household Employment Taxes, to report income tax withheld and social security and Medicare taxes on wages paid to a nonresident alien household employee.

Deposit Requirements

You are required to use the Electronic Federal Tax Payment System (EFTPS), discussed later, to deposit the tax withheld and required to be shown on Form 1042.

To avoid a penalty, do not mail your deposits directly to the IRS.

The amount of tax you are required to withhold determines the frequency of your deposits. The following rules explain how often deposits must be made.

Note.

If you are requesting an extension of time to file using Form 7004, follow these rules to see if you must make a deposit of any balance due or if you can pay it with Form 7004. See Form 7004 and its instructions for more information.

  1. If at the end of any quarter-monthly period the total amount of undeposited taxes is $2,000 or more, you must deposit the taxes within 3 business days after the end of the quarter-monthly period. (A quarter-monthly period ends on the 7th, 15th, 22nd, and last day of the month.) A business day is any day other than a Saturday, Sunday, or legal holiday in the District of Columbia.

  2. If at the end of any month the total amount of undeposited taxes is at least $200 but less than $2,000, you must deposit the taxes within 15 days after the end of the month. If you make a deposit of $2,000 or more during any month except December under rule 1, earlier, carry over any end-of-the-month balance of less than $2,000 to the next month. If you make a deposit of $2,000 or more during December, any end-of-December balance of less than $2,000 should be remitted with your Form 1042 by March 15, 2013.

  3. If at the end of a calendar year the total amount of undeposited taxes is less than $200, you may either pay the taxes with your Form 1042 or deposit the entire amount by March 15, 2013.

Electronic deposit requirement.   You must make electronic deposits of all depository tax liabilities using EFTPS. If you fail to use EFTPS, you may be subject to a 10% penalty. To enroll in or get more information about EFTPS, call 1-800-555-4477 or visit  
www.eftps.gov/eftps. Information is also available at www.irs.gov/e-pay .

Depositing on time.

For deposits made by EFTPS to be on time, you must initiate the deposit by 8 p.m. Eastern time the day before the date the deposit is due. If you use a third party to make deposits on your behalf, they may have different cutoff times.

Same-day wire payment option.   If you fail to initiate a deposit transaction on EFTPS by 8 p.m. Eastern time the day before the date a deposit is due, you still can make your deposit on time by using the Federal Tax Application. If you ever need the same-day wire payment method, you will need to make arrangements with your financial institution ahead of time. Check with your financial institution regarding availability, deadlines, and costs. Your financial institution may charge you a fee for payments made this way. To learn more about the information you will need to provide to your financial institution to make a same-day wire payment, visit www.eftps.gov to download the Same-Day Payment Worksheet.

Note.

All payments should be made in U.S. dollars.

Interest and Penalties

If you file Form 1042 late, or fail to pay or deposit the tax when due, you may be liable for penalties and interest unless you can show that the failure to file or pay was due to reasonable cause and not willful neglect.

You do not have to figure the amount of any interest or penalties you may owe. Because figuring these amounts can be complicated, we will do it for you if you want. We will send you a bill for any amount due.

If you include interest or penalties with your payment, identify and enter the amount in the bottom margin of Form 1042. Do not include interest or penalties in the balance due on line 68.

Interest.   Interest is charged on taxes not paid by the due date, even if an extension of time to file is granted. Interest is also charged on penalties imposed for failure to file, negligence, fraud, and substantial understatements of tax from the due date (including extensions) to the date of payment. Interest is figured at a rate determined under section 6621.

Late filing of Form 1042.   The penalty for not filing Form 1042 when due (including extensions) is 5% of the unpaid tax for each month or part of a month the return is late, up to a maximum of 25% of the unpaid tax.

Late payment of tax.   The penalty for not paying tax when due is usually ½ of 1% of the unpaid tax for each month or part of a month the tax is unpaid. The penalty cannot exceed 25% of the unpaid tax.

Other penalties.   Penalties may be imposed for negligence, substantial understatement of tax, and fraud. See sections 6662 and 6663.

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