Do I still file US returns while living in Canada on a green card?
Yes. The card is a tax status as much as an immigration one. For as long as it is valid you are treated as a US resident and report worldwide income, including the salary you earn in Canada and the accounts you hold there. Moving to Canada, becoming a Canadian tax resident and paying Canadian tax first do not end that obligation; they change which country has the first claim on the income and therefore how relief is worked out. Canada taxes you as a resident too. So the normal position is two returns covering the same year, prepared in an order that lets the Canadian tax carry through into the US calculation rather than being claimed twice or not at all.
Does claiming a treaty position on my US return risk my green card?
It can, which is why the tax and immigration timelines are planned together rather than one after the other. A treaty position that treats you as resident in Canada rather than the United States is a statement about where your home is, made on a US filing. The immigration side asks a very similar question about where you have settled. So a position adopted purely to reduce a tax bill can sit awkwardly beside an intention to keep the card. The analysis is done on both sides at once, from the same dates and the same documents, before anything is filed. If keeping the card matters more than the saving, that is a choice to make deliberately rather than discover afterwards.
How does giving up my green card affect my US taxes?
Abandoning the card is a formal act with a date attached, not simply a move. From that date the resident filing obligation stops running forward. But for someone who has held the card over a long period there is a separate body of rules aimed at long-term holders leaving the system, and those rules look at assets and filing history rather than only at the income of the year. So the sequence is to establish how long the card has been held, get the filing history complete, and only then choose the date. Handing the card in first and examining the tax position afterwards removes the one thing that was within your control.
Which country taxes my Canadian salary, Canada or the United States?
Both look at it. The treaty decides whose claim comes first and stops the income being taxed twice over; it does not cancel either country out. Canada taxes the employment income of a Canadian resident for work done in Canada. The United States taxes the same salary because the card makes you a resident there for tax purposes. Relief is worked out on the US return: part of foreign earned employment income can be excluded, and the Canadian tax paid on what is left is credited against the US tax on that same income. The exclusion reaches earned income only, so investment income, capital gains and pension income are dealt with entirely through the credit.
Are my Canadian savings and pension plans reportable to the US?
Accounts held outside the United States are generally within the reporting net of a US resident, and the card makes you one. Whether the income inside a particular Canadian plan also has to be shown on the US return is answered plan by plan: what the plan is, what it holds, who contributes to it and what the treaty says about that type of arrangement. Some plans are respected on the US side and some are not, and the answer decides whether the US return reports income the Canadian return does not. This is a documentation exercise before it is a tax one, so the first step is an inventory of every account with its terms, not an estimate of the tax.
Does an expired green card end my US tax obligations?
Not by itself. Abandonment is a formal act, so a card that has stopped working as a travel document has not necessarily ended your status for tax purposes, and the resident filing obligation runs until the status is formally ended or determined to have ended. That is where people come unstuck: they stop filing when the card stops being useful at the border, and the tax system still treats them as residents for years afterwards. So the first piece of work is to establish the status with dates on it — when it began, and whether anything has actually ended it. Every later question, from which return shows what to whether relief is available, is answered off those dates.
Can I take the foreign tax credit and the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion together?
On the same income, no — you cannot exclude income and then claim credit for foreign tax on the part you excluded. You can use both in one return on *different* income: exclude qualifying earned income, then claim credit for foreign tax on what remains, such as investment income or earnings above the cap. Which combination leaves you better off is an arithmetic question on your figures. Our FEIE vs foreign tax credit calculator works it through.
Would a state exit tax even be constitutional?
A levy imposed purely for leaving would face serious challenge under the constitutional protections for interstate commerce and the right to travel, which is part of why proposals stall. But that is not what most states are doing. Taxing income that was earned or sourced within the state before you left is conventional, long upheld, and where almost all real disputes sit — which is why the useful question is sourcing and domicile, not constitutionality. See state non-resident returns.
