Do I file Form 5471 if I own a company in the country I moved to?
Very likely, and this catches founders more than anyone. Incorporating a company where you live is an ordinary commercial act locally and a reporting event for a US person. The obligation follows ownership and control at the levels the filing categories describe, not the size of the company or whether it trades. A one-person consultancy with a single client can produce much the same reporting package as a substantial business, because the schedules ask about the corporation rather than about its scale.
Do I have to file Form 5471 as a director if I own no shares?
You can be inside the rule with no shares at all. The form reaches US shareholders, officers and directors of foreign corporations at the ownership and control levels the categories set out, so an office held in a foreign company can be enough on its own. In practice the first question is not how much you own but which category you fall into, because the category decides what you have to produce. People appointed to a board as a formality are the group most often surprised by this.
Can I just use my foreign company's local accounts for Form 5471?
Not as they stand. The schedules ask for the corporation's income statement, balance sheet and earnings restated to US principles, so accounts prepared under local rules have to be reworked before they can be used. That is usually the longest part of the job and the part nobody budgets for: the underlying bookkeeping is generally sound, but the presentation, the classifications and the treatment of particular items are not the ones the schedules expect. Expect to need the trial balance rather than the signed statutory accounts.
Do I pay US tax on profits I leave in my foreign company?
Possibly, and this is the sting behind the form. Current-inclusion rules can tax undistributed foreign profits in the owner's hands before any money is taken out, so a decision to retain earnings in the company is not automatically a decision to defer US tax. That means the position has to be worked out before you plan distributions rather than after. Owners who kept profits in the company for commercial reasons are often the ones with the largest inclusion, precisely because nothing was ever paid out to prompt the question.
Does a foreign company with no trading still need Form 5471?
Inactivity does not answer the question. The obligation is decided by ownership and control facts rather than by whether the company did anything, which is why a nil position does not remove it. What activity affects is the content: the category you fall into determines which schedules you complete, and a company with no transactions has less to report than one with intercompany dealings. So the year still has to be worked through, and what changes is how much of the package it produces.
What information does Form 5471 need from my foreign company?
More than most owners expect. It is an information return about the corporation itself: who owns it, its income statement, its balance sheet, its earnings, and its transactions with related parties including you. Practically, the company's books have to be available to you in enough detail to be restated, and payments between you and the company, such as loans, management charges and expenses met personally, have to be identified as such rather than left as unexplained movements. Gathering that is the work; the form is the output.
Can I set up a trust that works in two countries?
You can, but the two systems classify and tax trusts differently enough that a structure which is efficient in one is often a reporting problem in the other — a Canadian family trust with a US beneficiary, or a US revocable trust holding Canadian property, are the classic pairs. Canada's twenty-one-year deemed disposition, the US grantor rules and each country's reporting have to be read together, before drafting rather than after. See cross-border wills and trusts.
What is FAPI, and how does it differ from GILTI?
Canada's foreign accrual property income taxes a Canadian shareholder currently on the passive income of a controlled foreign affiliate — interest, rent, royalties, certain gains — with a deduction that recognises foreign tax already paid on it. GILTI comes at the problem from the opposite side: it targets active income above a return on tangible assets. A group with both a Canadian and a US shareholder can therefore be inside both regimes on different slices of the same profit. See GILTI against FAPI.
