There is a certain absolution of shame that comes from watching others share in your sin. Filing taxes an hour before the post office’s closure on the final day of the tax deadline is perhaps the most cardinal sin of all.
I found a party of ten Harvard internationals in the USPS building on Mount Auburn Street. Our social gathering’s postage dates recorded, on the federal level, the new debilitating lows of our collective procrastination problem. “You too?” we asked as more familiar faces entered. Sometimes, a sheepish shrug or poor excuse would return our greeting.
It would be easy to chalk this dallying to some devil-may-care attitude, but that would be too flattering a portrait of my neuroses. I worry about taxes all the time: collecting fines from calculating the wrong figure, stewing increasingly on the moral implications of my taxes’ usage, and fretting over the irrational and unfounded fear of deportation.
Harvard gives internationals access to Sprintax, a “U.S. Income Tax Software for Non-Resident Aliens.” “Aliens” is such a hostile word. Its usage in the continuous stream of Sprintax emails reminded me yet again of the tenuous foothold I have in this country as an all-caps FOREIGNER.
Sprintax and I are in a love-hate relationship of sorts. Sprintax software is clunky and malfunctions all the time. Still, without it, I could never have imagined navigating this extremely convoluted (read: broken) tax filing system. In the U.K., the correct amount of tax is automatically deducted from our incomes. Our international WhatsApp group chat is filled with questions about taxes. How mundane! People arrange Zoom calls and tax filing parties to sadistically share our suffering. My American counterparts seem, by and large, to have their parents file for them as part of their household. For most, our international hassle is not theirs.
The seeming lack of urgency with which I handle financial matters could be readily mistaken for a reflection of the lack of care afforded to the money flowing out of my bank account, but this could be no further from the truth. If I am so fastidious in selecting the best menu item that my $40 can get me at a nice restaurant or adamant in finding that $10 Uber Eats discount code, it would be illogical to then suddenly not care about what thousands of dollars of my money given to the government is being used for.
Undisputedly, this concern about how tax money is spent is widely shared among American students at Harvard. However, as international students, we find ourselves in a unique position: we deliberately opted into the American taxation system when we decided to study in the U.S. Yet, when I decided whether or not to accept my Harvard offer four years ago, the idea of societal monetary responsibility or complicity did not factor into my thought process at all. Having lived here now for several years, I realize I was remiss to do so.
My income tax dollars provide revenue for federal, local, and state governments. Those receiving financial aid are taxed on this scholarship, too. In return, I drive on American streets, call American police, and sun myself in U.S. national parks.
Our Harvard education is also partially subsidized by our taxes. According to The Crimson’s analysis of Harvard University’s financial report in January 2024, federal funding is essential, accounting for about an eighth of the University’s total revenue. This money is incredibly significant, providing 66% of the funding for Harvard’s research activities. However, federal contributions are a much less significant 6% of the financial aid Harvard students receive.
Whilst I reap the benefits from the various services funded by taxes every day, I also have significant concerns about many of the U.S. government’s spending decisions. In lectures, we learn of taxation as one of the great economic inventions that funds public works, infrastructure, and wars. The breadth of this commission, undeniably for all peoples, will generate dispute.
I find myself waxing on about American politics, policy, and economy—absorbed fully in the American machine. Yet, had I chosen to remain in the U.K., the extent of my involvement with the U.S. would have been solely through the outsider lens—a spectator to the heft with which the U.S. so readily extends its hands across the globe. Instead, now, I live on the inside.
Rather, I have come to understand the chafing and resentment of “taxation without representation.” I acknowledge this is a privileged realization to have relatively late in life. No non-citizen is allowed suffrage in federal or statewide elections—a status quo actually untrue in my home country. If I cannot voice my dissent through vote, this leaves me grappling with the other avenues of influence that remain to me.
As students, the universities we live in are the key conduits through which we interact with the United States. We learn from our peers and professors, developing ideas for what these institutions and our countries should look like. Thus, it is no surprise that colleges are also the forums where students express their voices and find leverage to force change. Protests are a hallmark of this.
As of April 27, 2024, the Students4Gaza directory lists 74 universities across the U.S. with pro-Palestinian, anti-war, and anti-Israeli-government protests and counterprotests. Look only to Harvard Yard right now to see this activism at our doorstep. A sizable proportion of these students are internationals. These students see this as a means of making change despite having no vote and fragile visa status. Pointedly, these protests may come at great personal cost to these internationals and are divisive nationally. Note that protests and voting are not the only ways to effect change.
Considering other spheres of public life, perhaps improving education is your priority. Harvard can also be examined through this lens. As a Muslim student, the educational experiences of my fellow Muslims at Harvard are particularly important to me. The Crimson published the 2024 results of its annual survey of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Receiving 508 responses from 1400 members of FAS, 37.5% said they “somewhat” or “strongly agree” that there is systemic anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bias at Harvard. A further 21.95% “neither agree nor disagree.”
Unfortunately, this means a whopping 59.4% of surveyed FAS faculty do not disagree that there is an institutionalized problem of Islamophobia and Arab xenophobia. The extent of this issue, as suggested by these figures, is completely unacceptable. My federal taxes and tuition go to Harvard—my money supports my own community’s system of disenfranchisement.
Many internationals will, by nature, remain in the U.S. after graduation. Whether for study, work, or marriage, many of us will continue to contribute to the American system. We pay our taxes as an investment in the U.S. Any investor in a fund will provide a mandate with a list of intended outcomes. As good investors in this country, international students at Harvard should be doing their due diligence to understand how this money is being utilized. Let me emphasize: we chose to bring our money here. Thus, we should want our payoff in all areas of public life.
Intentionally or not, your money and presence are already shaping America. Why not steer the direction and betterment of our new home more deliberately? Reflect on all the ways we can contribute beyond the ballot box. Our status as internationals does not absolve us of holding apathy or forsaking our civic duties. Caring about how my taxes are used is, at its core, an act of love.
Taybah Crorie ’25 (taybahcrorie@college.harvard.edu) understands that money is power—it is good to know how to wield it.