damn and blast! i sit down to use cintax to file taxes like i did last year and i find that i'm now considered a resident alien for tax purposes. how can this be, i cry, and looked it up whereupon it emerges that including my virginia years this is now my sixth year here in the us and one is only automatically exempt as non-resident for the first five years. so i say to myself i am a big girl now i shall bravely sit down and learn to file taxes like any other us citizen, and i find that i am immediately in a complete muddle. for the first half of last year (the second half of the first academic year), tax was withheld from my stipend. for the second half of last year (the first half of the second academic year) it wasn't. but that is not the real problem. the real problem is that i have not got a W2 form this year. this is because, apparently, the department cut the pursestrings at the start of the year. as far as the grad school is concerned i don't exist and i don't don't exist. in anycase i'm not on the payroll records. now i have got to go about writing to people and waiting about in offices in a very very busy work week. i have two papers and a presentation and a major transcription exercise all due in the next two weeks. this is such a muddle!