Expat Transition Coordination — Leaving the US or Canada Without Leaving Money on the Table

An international relocation for a US or Canadian citizen carries two distinct problems that most people collapse into one. The first is annual compliance — making sure the right forms are filed, foreign accounts are reported, and nothing triggers penalties. The second is multi-year positioning: the structural decisions about timing, entity placement, and residency that determine whether you pay an extra $30,000 a year for the next decade or not.

Most accounting firms address the first problem competently. They file the return, attach the foreign schedules, and send an invoice. But few address the second — the positioning work that happens before departure and in the first twelve months after arrival. That work requires coordinating across tax counsel, immigration attorneys, corporate advisors, and in-country professionals simultaneously.

Our role is to project-manage both dimensions. We do not prepare returns or give tax advice. We assemble the right specialists for your citizenship, destination, and asset profile, then manage the timeline so that compliance and positioning happen in the right order — not whichever one someone happens to think of first.

Yes. The United States taxes its citizens and green-card holders on worldwide income regardless of where they live. Moving abroad does not change this. You remain a US taxpayer until you formally renounce citizenship or abandon your green card through the proper procedure — and even then, exit-tax rules may apply.

Two provisions reduce the burden for most expats: the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion (FEIE, currently ~$126,500 for 2024) and the Foreign Tax Credit (FTC), which offsets US tax by the amount paid to another country. These reduce but do not eliminate the obligation. Investment income, capital gains, and income above the FEIE threshold remain fully taxable. State residency can persist independently of federal rules — California, for example, presumes continued residency unless you can demonstrate otherwise.

The practical implication: an expat who earns $300,000 abroad, holds appreciated stock, or owns a business structured in a non-treaty jurisdiction cannot simply rely on exclusions. The filing remains complex, and the positioning decisions made before departure determine how much of that complexity is avoidable. We coordinate with CPAs who specialize in expat returns to ensure both the filing and the structural planning are handled correctly.

An expat return is not one form — it is a stack of interconnected filings, each with its own thresholds, penalties, and deadlines. We coordinate with CPAs who handle these filings to ensure nothing falls through the cracks. The forms that commonly apply include:

• Form 1040 — the standard US individual return, required regardless of residence • FBAR (FinCEN 114) — foreign bank account report, required if aggregate balances exceed $10,000 at any point during the year • FATCA (Form 8938) — foreign financial asset statement, thresholds vary by filing status and residence • Form 5471 — information return for US shareholders of controlled foreign corporations • Form 8621 — Passive Foreign Investment Company (PFIC) reporting for non-US mutual funds and ETFs • GILTI (Form 8992) — Global Intangible Low-Taxed Income, applies to CFC owners • Form 3520/3520-A — foreign trust reporting • Form 8865 — foreign partnership interests

Missing a single one of these can trigger penalties starting at $10,000 per form. The coordination challenge is not just getting them filed — it is ensuring the underlying structure (which entities exist, where accounts are held, how investments are titled) does not create unnecessary filing obligations in the first place. That structural work is what we project-manage alongside the filing itself.

The decisions made in the 90 days before departure are worth more than anything done after. Once you have moved, your residency date is set, your departure-year income is split across jurisdictions, and your options narrow dramatically. The sequencing of actions — when you sell assets, when you terminate state residency, when you establish foreign tax residence, when you restructure entities — determines the tax outcome for years.

The expensive mistake is moving first and calling professionals second. By the time most people engage help, they have already triggered state exit issues, moved assets at the wrong time, or established foreign residence before severing domestic ties. These are not problems that can be fixed retroactively. They compound every April for years.

We coordinate a departure timeline that sequences every action — asset sales, account closures, entity restructuring, visa activation, lease signing, state de-registration — in the order that produces the best outcome. This means assembling the team 6-12 months before departure, not 6 weeks. Our role is to hold the timeline, manage dependencies between advisors, and ensure nothing gets done out of order.

IRC §877A imposes an exit tax on "covered expatriates" — US citizens or long-term residents who renounce or abandon status. You become a covered expatriate if your average annual net income tax liability for the five preceding years exceeds approximately $201,000 (2024, indexed), your net worth exceeds $2 million, or you cannot certify five years of tax compliance. The exit tax treats all worldwide assets as sold at fair market value on the day before expatriation.

For anyone near these thresholds, planning needs to begin 12-24 months before the intended expatriation date. Strategies exist to reduce net worth below the threshold, accelerate income into pre-expatriation years, or structure asset transfers — but all require coordination with qualified tax counsel and must be implemented well in advance. Last-minute execution risks both substantive failure and procedural challenge from the IRS.

We coordinate the covered-expatriate analysis with qualified tax counsel, manage the timeline for any pre-expatriation restructuring, and ensure that the Form 8854 (Initial and Annual Expatriation Statement) is filed correctly. This is not something to delegate to a generalist accountant — it requires coordination between immigration counsel, tax counsel, and wealth advisors working to the same deadline.

Canada does not tax by citizenship after departure — but it imposes a deemed disposition on virtually all assets when you leave. This means every unrealized capital gain is crystallized on your departure date, and tax is owed as if you had sold everything. For someone holding appreciated real estate (other than a principal residence), investment portfolios, or private company shares, the departure tax bill can be substantial.

The coordination challenge is timing. The deemed disposition can be managed through pre-departure planning: electing to defer on certain property types, posting security in lieu of immediate payment, timing the departure date to minimize gains, or restructuring holdings before the event. All of this requires modeling the departure-tax exposure before you sever Canadian residency — not after.

We coordinate with Canadian tax professionals who specialize in departure planning, manage the modeling of deemed-disposition exposure, and ensure that elections and security postings are filed with CRA on time. For dual US-Canada citizens, the interaction between Canadian departure tax and US worldwide taxation adds another layer that requires both teams working from the same timeline.

The specialist team for an expat transition must align to three things: your citizenship, your destination country, and your asset profile. A CPA who handles US expats in the UK is not the right CPA for a US expat moving to Portugal with a CFC in Singapore. Geography matters less than jurisdiction match — your US return preparer does not need to be in your city, but they do need to understand treaty positions for your specific destination.

The coordinator role — our role — is to identify and assemble the team, define each professional's scope, prevent overlap and gaps, and manage the flow of information between them. Without coordination, you end up with four professionals who each assume someone else is handling the departure-year elections, or who give conflicting advice because they are working from different assumptions about your timeline.

We maintain a network of vetted specialists across major expat corridors (US to EU, US to UAE, US to APAC, Canada to US, Canada to EU) and match based on your specific combination of factors. The initial discovery session maps your situation and produces a recommended team composition with defined scopes — before any engagement begins.

This engagement fits people who are making (or have recently made) a significant international move and have enough complexity that a generalist accountant is insufficient. Typical profiles include: entrepreneurs with a business sale on a 12-24 month horizon who want to sequence departure before liquidity events; high-income earners ($300K+) who are 12+ months from departure and want to position correctly; families where one or both spouses hold citizenship in multiple countries; and digital-asset holders whose portfolio creates PFIC, CFC, or reporting complexity.

If your move is less than 90 days away, contact us immediately — there is still time to coordinate the departure sequence, but the window narrows fast. If you have already moved and are dealing with compliance gaps, missed filings, or a structure that is costing more than it should, we coordinate remediation with specialist CPAs and counsel.

This is not the right fit if you are a straightforward W-2 employee moving abroad with no investments, no business interests, and income below the FEIE threshold. In that case, a single expat-focused CPA is sufficient, and we are happy to refer one. Our coordination layer adds value when there are multiple professionals, multiple jurisdictions, and decisions that interact across a timeline.