Tag Archives: Green Card Exit Tax

Are Green Card holders resident outside the USA "US persons" under the #FATCA IGA?

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Introduction …

The above tweet references a comment that was left on Olivier Wagner’s Tax Samurai blog. Olivier is discussing an earlier post of mine called “When It Comes To FATCA, There Are Four Kinds Of Americans Abroad“.

I highly recommend his “post about my post”.

The comments discuss the question of:

Is a Green Card Holder resident in Canada a “U.S. Person” for the purposes of FATCA?

The last comment notes that the Canada Revenue Agency is advising U.S. Green Card Holders who are resident in Canada that they should NOT identify as “U.S. Persons” under the FATCA IGA.

The exact text of the comment reads:

Green Card holders in Canada are interpreting the following statement from the Government of Canada to mean that FATCA does NOT apply to them:

http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/tx/nnrsdnts/nhncdrprtng/ndvdls-eng.html

“I hold a U.S. green card. How does this affect my tax residency?

If you are a green card holder (that is, a lawful permanent resident of the U.S.), the U.S. considers you to be a U.S. resident.

However, if you are a resident of Canada for tax purposes and do not hold U.S. citizenship, you should not identify yourself as a U.S. person to your Canadian financial institution.”

The actual IGA is here.

FATCA-eng

The definition section includes “U.S. residents” which presumably means tax residents (which in the case of Green Card Holders may be affected by a Treaty election).

The plain reading of the statement on the CRA site will mean that Green Card holders resident in Canada will NOT identify as being U.S. tax subjects.

Note: I tried to leave a similar comment a moment ago, but it didn’t seem to show up. This is a duplicate. Feel free to pick one comment or the other.

– See more at: http://www.taxsamurai.com/index.php/2014/09/06/four-kinds-americans-abroad-response/#comment-7

The purpose of this post is to expand this discussion …

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