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Purpose

Non-U.S. citizen students commonly attempt to tutor on Knack. We do not discriminate against these students, nor do we prevent non-U.S. citizen students from signing up as a tutor on Knack. It's our goal to allow as many students of diverse backgrounds as possible to participate in tutoring while minimizing risks to students' immigration status. To support this, we provide potential tutors who are non-U.S. citizens with information about how to navigate tutoring on Knack. This includes a directive to confirm with their international student office or other immigration authorities as to whether they can, or cannot, tutor on Knack, as well as if there are any restrictions in doing so. We also provide colleges with the following information to help prepare international student offices to direct students.

How to prepare

We encourage international student offices to be prepared to support students who come to them with questions asking whether they can tutor on Knack and advise them regarding any potential restrictions on doing so. Thus, it's important to understand how Knack works for non-U.S. citizen tutors, as well as whether to authorize foreign students in common situations – the most common being F-1 and J-1 student visas and DACA recipients.

While we cannot give legal advice on how to approve or deny these students, we can provide you with information on how Knack works to help enable you to make those decisions. Any other questions can be sent to us directly.

How Knack works for non-U.S. tutors

All Knack Tutors are classified as 1099 contractors unless your learning center is explicitly hiring them as W-2 employees. If this is the case for your institution, you may consult the learning center for information about their policies for working with non-U.S. citizen tutors.

Because Knack Tutors are 1099 contractors, we cannot verify the work authorization of non-U.S. citizen students or whether they are working within the guidelines of their authorization. While tutors are ultimately responsible for doing so, we do educate non-U.S. citizens attempting to sign up as a tutor about the implications of being a non-U.S. citizen working as a 1099 contractor on Knack.

To do this, we ask all tutor applicants if they are a non-U.S. citizen who requires work authorization during the onboarding process. If they are not sure, we tell them to answer "yes" if they: are in the U.S. under a Visa (F1, J1, etc.), if they are a DACA recipient (Dreamer), or if they are not a permanent resident.

If a potential tutor responds affirmatively to the above, Knack will alert the student they need to confirm with their international student office or other immigration authority whether they can, or cannot, tutor on Knack and any restrictions in doing so. We also provide them with educational information about what they will have to do as a non-U.S. citizen tutoring on Knack, listed below.

The language provided to these tutors can be found here. The key points are:

Once a tutor applicant is made aware of the implications of tutoring as a non-U.S. citizen, they may continue to sign up to tutor on Knack without signing any employment agreement/offer letter, and without having to show any work authorization documents. To register as a tutor, they will need to enter a U.S. address. Tutors may then choose to work as desired without any restrictions on the locations in which they work, how much they work, and what times they work. Knack does not provide any specific curriculum or subject matter for tutors to utilize in tutoring sessions.

Once tutors have completed tutor training and/or tutoring sessions, money will be added to their account balance like any other Knack Tutor. Tutors must ensure their bank account information is added to their profile to receive direct payouts from our payment processor, Stripe, and they will be responsible for paying taxes as a 1099 contractor. If they earn over $600 through Knack in the calendar year, we will request their SSN or other TIN in order to send them a form 1099-NEC. Full tax implications for students can be found here.

If students decide they no longer want to tutor, tutors may choose to stop working at any time without any termination or end of work agreements.

For more information and support, check out our Help Center or chat with us by clicking the bubble in the bottom right corner of any page.