Every line, in order — and the one thing no other instructions page tells you: where to find your treaty article number.
Every rate on this page is cited to the treaty article that authorises it. Treaty texts last read September 21, 2026.
Quick answer
Part I says who you are, Part II makes the treaty claim, Part III is the signature. Most people need eight lines and about ten minutes. The two that cause trouble are line 6a, your foreign tax number, and line 10, which most filers should leave blank — and which, when it is needed, requires a treaty article number that no other instructions page tells you how to find.
Key takeaways
Line 3 is never a US address. It is your permanent residence abroad, and a US address there contradicts the whole form.
Line 6a stops more forms than anything else. A US financial institution generally needs your home-country tax number.
Line 10 is usually blank. Ordinary portfolio dividend and interest claims are covered by line 9 alone.
When line 10 is needed, get the article from the treaty as amended by any protocol — the number usually survives a protocol and the rate usually does not.
Dates are MM-DD-YYYY, and the form goes to your payer rather than to the IRS.
Before you start
Confirm three things: that you are an individual rather than an entity, that you are not a US person, and whether you are actually claiming a treaty benefit.
The third one decides how much of the form you fill in. Part I alone documents your foreign status, which is often all a payer needs. Part II is optional and only worth completing if a treaty gives you a better rate than 30%. The lookup tells you whether it does.
If you are a US citizen, green card holder or resident alien under the substantial presence test, stop — you are a US person and this is the wrong form. See what Form W-8BEN is for the rest of the W-8 family.
Part I — who you are, line by line
Eight lines. Three of them routinely cause problems, and they are marked.
Line 1Name
Your legal name as it appears on your passport and on any tax document you have filed.
Watch out: A name that does not match the account or the ITIN record is the commonest cause of a rejected form.
Line 2Country of citizenship
Citizenship, which is not necessarily where you live or where you claim treaty residence.
Line 3Permanent residence address
Where you actually reside for tax purposes in your home country.
Watch out: Never a US address, and never care-of or a PO box. A US address here contradicts the whole form and invites 30% withholding.
Line 4Mailing address
Only if post reaches you somewhere other than line 3.
Line 5US taxpayer identification number
Your SSN or ITIN, if you have one. Many people legitimately do not.
Watch out: Leaving this blank is fine for most treaty claims on portfolio income, but NOT for every claim — some require a US TIN, and a claim needing one without one fails.
Line 6aForeign tax identifying number
Your home-country tax number. Required if you hold an account with a US financial institution that pays you reportable income.
Watch out: This is the line that most often stops a broker accepting the form. Your FTIN is the number your own revenue authority knows you by.
Line 6bFTIN not legally required
Tick this only if your jurisdiction does not issue tax identifying numbers or does not require you to have one.
Watch out: Not a box to tick because you cannot find your number. It is a statement about your country's law.
Line 7Reference numbers
Whatever the payer needs to match the form to you — usually an account number.
Line 8Date of birth
MM-DD-YYYY. Required if you hold an account with a US financial institution.
Watch out: The US date order catches non-Americans out. 3 April 1990 is 04-03-1990, not 03-04-1990.
Line 9 names your treaty country. Line 10 is for special conditions — and most people do not need it.
Line 9Country of residence for treaty purposes
The country whose treaty you are claiming under. One country, named.
Watch out: This is treaty residence, not citizenship and not where you happen to be living. A dual resident must resolve it under the treaty's tie-breaker first.
Line 10Special rates and conditions
The treaty article, the rate, the income type, and why you meet the conditions — but only for claims the line 9 representation does not already cover.
Watch out: Most portfolio dividend and interest claims do NOT need line 10 at all. Filling it in unnecessarily gives the payer something to query.
The instructions are precise about when line 10 applies: “Line 10 must be used only if you are claiming treaty benefits that require that you meet conditions not covered by the representations on line 9.”
In practice, that means these cases and few others:
Royalties — the rate usually depends on the class of royalty, so the article and rate have to be stated.
Scholarship, fellowship or grant income claimed under a students-and-trainees article.
Business profits argued not to be attributable to a US permanent establishment.
Any benefit a treaty conditions on the income being remitted to, or taxed in, your country of residence.
A treaty article applied to income that would otherwise be treated differently — for example a pension article displacing the default treatment.
If you are claiming an ordinary dividend or interest rate, leave line 10 blank
The representation you make on line 9 already covers it. Filling line 10 in anyway gives the payer a condition to verify, and a form that raises questions is a form that sits in a queue.
Identify the article by income type, then check for a protocol before you write the rate down. The second step is the one that gets skipped.
This is the question every other instructions page leaves unanswered. They all say “enter the treaty article”; none says where it comes from. Here are four routes, cheapest first.
1
Use the lookup on this site
Pick your country and the kind of income. It returns the article, including any protocol that amended it, and the rate that article sets.
Twelve countries are covered in depth; the rest fall back to the general path.
2
Read the treaty's own table of contents
The articles are numbered consistently across nearly every US treaty: Article 10 is dividends, 11 is interest, 12 is royalties, and the students and teachers articles sit in the high teens or twenties.
Numbering is a convention, not a rule. Canada uses Roman numerals — dividends are Article X, not Article 10.
3
Check for a protocol before you write the number down
Protocols replace whole articles. The article number usually survives; the RATE inside it often does not.
This is the step that produces wrong forms. Japan's 2013 protocol replaced Article 11 and took interest to 0%; Spain's 2013 protocol rewrote Articles 10, 11 and 12. Reading the base text alone gives you a superseded rate.
4
Cross-check against IRS Table 1
The IRS publishes a withholding rate table by country and income type, which is a fast sanity check on the rate you derived.
Table 1 lags. It is a check on your reading, never a substitute for the article — and where the two disagree, the treaty text wins.
The article numbers that hold across most US treaties
A starting point, not a guarantee — check your own treaty
Income type
Usually
Dividends
Article 10
Interest
Article 11
Royalties
Article 12
Independent personal services / business profits
Article 7 or 14
Dependent personal services (employment)
Article 15
Pensions
Article 17 or 18
Government service
Article 19
Students, trainees and apprentices
Article 20 or 21
Teachers and researchers
Article 19, 20 or 21, where the treaty has one
The step that produces wrong forms
Protocols replace whole articles, and they usually keep the article number while changing the rate inside it. Japan’s 2013 protocol replaced Article 11 and took interest to 0%. Spain’s 2013 protocol rewrote Articles 10, 11 and 12. Reading the base treaty text top to bottom — which is what the IRS-hosted PDF gives you — produces a superseded rate and a claim the payer will not match.
Write the citation the way a protocol-aware reader would, for example “Article 11(1), as amended by the 2013 protocol, Article 2”. It takes one extra clause and it shows the payer you have read the right text.
You will need the same number again
If you also apply for an ITIN, Form W-7 asks for the treaty country, the article and the rate in the same terms. Work it out once and reuse it — the W-7 walkthrough shows where it goes.
Part III — signing it
You sign personally, under penalties of perjury, and the form goes to the payer.
Read the certification first. You are certifying that you are the beneficial owner of the income, that you are not a US person, that the income is not effectively connected with a US trade or business, and — if you completed Part II — that you are a resident of the treaty country you named.
An agent can sign with written authorisation, and there is a box to say so. Use MM-DD-YYYY for the date. Then send it to the withholding agent, not to the IRS, and keep a copy with the date you signed it so you know when it expires — The form "remains in effect ... ending on the last day of the third succeeding calendar year" — so one signed in March 2026 runs to 31 December 2029.
Why forms come back
Six recurring problems, and what each one actually costs you.
Common rejections and how to fix them
The problem
What happens
The fix
A US address on line 3
The payer treats the claim as inconsistent with foreign status and withholds the full 30%.
Line 3 is your permanent residence abroad. If you have genuinely moved to the United States, a W-8BEN is the wrong form and you may owe a W-9 instead.
Line 6a blank at a US financial institution
The broker cannot treat the form as valid and applies 30%.
Enter your home-country tax number, or tick 6b only if your jurisdiction genuinely does not require one.
Line 9 naming a country with no treaty
There is no benefit to claim, so the statutory 30% applies in full.
Check whether a treaty exists at all before claiming. Brazil, for example, has no US income tax treaty.
An article number taken from the base treaty text after a protocol replaced it
The rate claimed does not match the rate the payer's system holds, and the claim is queried or refused.
Cite the article as amended, e.g. "Article 11(1), as amended by the 2013 protocol".
The form has expired
Withholding reverts to 30% without warning, usually in January.
A W-8BEN lasts to the end of the third succeeding calendar year. Diarise the renewal.
Line 10 completed when it was not needed
Not fatal, but it gives the payer a condition to verify and is a common source of delay.
Leave it blank for ordinary portfolio dividend and interest claims.
If tax has already been over-withheld and the payer will not correct it, the remaining routes are a US nonresident return claiming a refund, or — where you are taxed on the same income at home — the foreign tax creditin your own country’s equivalent. Both are a great deal more work than getting line 6a right the first time.
Frequently asked questions
How do I find the treaty article number for line 10?
Start with the income type: across nearly every US treaty, dividends are Article 10, interest Article 11 and royalties Article 12. Then — and this is the step that goes wrong — check whether a protocol replaced that article, because protocols usually keep the number and change the rate. The lookup on this site returns the article and any amending protocol for your country and income type.
Do I have to complete line 10 on Form W-8BEN?
Usually not. Line 10 is only for claims that require conditions the line 9 representation does not already cover — royalties, scholarship and fellowship income, business profits not attributable to a permanent establishment, and remittance-conditioned claims. An ordinary treaty claim on portfolio dividends or bank interest needs line 9 and nothing more. Filling line 10 in unnecessarily just gives the payer something to query.
What do I put on line 6a if I do not have a foreign tax number?
If your country does not issue tax identifying numbers, or does not require you to have one, tick line 6b instead. That box is a statement about your jurisdiction’s law — not a box to tick because you cannot find your number. If your country does issue them and you simply do not know yours, find it: a US financial institution generally cannot treat the form as valid without it.
Can I put my US address on Form W-8BEN?
Not on line 3. Line 3 is your permanent residence abroad, and a US address there contradicts the foreign status the whole form certifies — payers treat it as a reason to withhold the full 30%. A US mailing address on line 4 is possible but invites questions. If you have genuinely moved to the United States, your status may have changed and a W-9 may now be the right form.
Do I need an ITIN to complete Form W-8BEN?
For most treaty claims on portfolio income, no — line 5 is left blank and the claim still works. Some claims do require a US taxpayer number, and a few payers ask for one as a matter of policy even where the rules do not. Where you genuinely need one, the ITIN application on Form W-7 asks for the same treaty article and rate you worked out for line 10.
What date format does Form W-8BEN use?
MM-DD-YYYY, which catches non-Americans out constantly. The third of April 1990 is 04-03-1990 on this form, not 03-04-1990. Line 8 wants your date of birth in that order, and so does the signature date at the end. A transposed date is a common reason a form is queried.
Who signs Form W-8BEN?
You do, personally, under penalties of perjury. An agent may sign only with written authorisation, and the form has a box to indicate that. Read the certification above the signature before you sign it: you are certifying that you are the beneficial owner, that you are not a US person, and that the treaty claim is correct.
How often do I need to resubmit Form W-8BEN?
Every three years or so — the form lasts to the last day of the third succeeding calendar year — and immediately whenever a change in circumstances makes anything on it wrong. You have 30 days to notify the payer and file a replacement. Expiry is not announced, so diarise it.
This is a walkthrough, not advice on your claim. The article and rate you cite are your representation to the payer, made under penalties of perjury — check them against the treaty text for your country before you sign.
Every rate and article on this page is cited to the treaty text it comes from, so you or your accountant can check it. Treaty provisions turn on facts we do not know about you — residency, beneficial ownership, limitation-on-benefits conditions and the savings clause can all change the answer. Read the article before you rely on the number, and take advice on anything material.