Covered expatriate test calculator
Run the three covered expatriate tests and estimate the exit charge.
Open itTwo reports, two agencies, two sets of thresholds, one pile of assets. Enter your values and filing position and this says which reports are due, which test triggered, and how much headroom is left on each.
Your position
Joint filers get double the asset-statement thresholds. The bank-account report threshold does not change.
Living abroad raises the asset-statement thresholds substantially. It has no effect on the bank-account report.
US$
Financial accounts, foreign securities held outside an account, interests in foreign entities and certain other assets.
US$
The peak, which is a separate test and often the one that catches people.
US$
Accounts only, aggregated across all of them, at any time in the year.
US$
Leave at zero to use the current figure for your status. The prefilled figures are cited below.
US$
Leave at zero to use the current figure for your status.
US$
Ten thousand dollars aggregate at any time under the current rule.
What is due
—
Threshold set applied —
Specified foreign asset statement —
Foreign bank account report —
Year-end threshold applied—
Any-time threshold applied—
Triggered by—
Bank-account report threshold—
Headroom under the year-end threshold—
Headroom under the account threshold—
Two reports that overlap but do not match
The foreign bank account report goes to the financial crimes bureau and covers financial accounts only, aggregated, with a threshold of ten thousand dollars at any point in the year. It does not care where you live or how you file. The specified foreign asset statement goes to the tax authority with your return, covers a wider class of assets including securities held outside an account and interests in foreign entities, and has thresholds that change with filing status and with whether you live abroad.
Most people with foreign accounts end up filing both, and the same account appears on each. Filing one does not satisfy the other, and the penalties are separate. The differences that catch people are the wider asset class on the tax statement and the fact that the bank-account threshold is far lower and does not rise for expatriates.
The peak value is the test that catches people
Both reports test the highest value during the year, not just the year-end balance. A single transaction moving through an account — a property sale, an inheritance, a transfer between two of your own accounts — can push the peak far above anything the year-end statements show. Aggregating across accounts makes it worse, because the same money moving from one account to another counts in both.
So the honest answer for anyone near a threshold is to check the maximum balance on every statement rather than the December one. The headroom figures in the readout are against the year-end and account thresholds; if the peak is close, treat the report as due.
Worked example
A US citizen living in Toronto and filing singly holds 260,000 dollars of Canadian investments at year end, peaking at 310,000 mid-year, with 85,000 across her bank accounts.
- Living abroad and filing singly, the asset-statement thresholds are 200,000 at year end and 300,000 at any time.
- She is over both, so the statement is due — and the peak test would have caught her even if her year-end figure had been lower.
- Her accounts peak at 85,000, well over the ten thousand dollar aggregate, so the bank-account report is due too.
Untick living abroad and the thresholds drop to 50,000 and 75,000. Same assets, and the answer was never close.
What this calculator assumes
- The prefilled threshold figures are the current ones and are cited below. Both are editable, so a later change does not make the tool wrong.
- A joint filer is treated as sharing one set of doubled thresholds. Married filing separately uses the single figures.
- Which assets count differs between the two reports, and this tool does not classify your assets. It tests the values you enter against the thresholds.
- Other information returns can be triggered by the same assets — foreign trusts, foreign corporations, foreign partnerships, foreign gifts — and are outside this checker.
An estimate, not advice. This is an estimate built from what you typed, not advice on your file. Nothing here reads your documents, checks your treaty article or looks at the year you are actually in. Where the number matters, we agree a fixed fee in writing before any work starts.
Where these figures come from
- current comparison Comparison of Form 8938 and FBAR requirements — IRS
- current guidance Do I need to file Form 8938 — IRS
- current guidance Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts — IRS
Any figure prefilled in the panel above is stated with the year it belongs to and can be changed. Rates and thresholds move; a calculator that asks you for the current one stays right, and one that hides a guess does not.
Files that look like this one
Case study 1
Never Filed a US Return — and Only Just Found Out
Born in the United States, left as an infant, and told by a bank that the returns were owed all along. The work is sequencing: establish which years are actually open, choose the catch-up route on the facts rather than filing quietly, and claim the exclusions and credits that were never taken.
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Case study 2
A Canadian Working in the US on a Work Visa
Immigration status and tax residence are different tests, and a visa says nothing about which country taxes the salary. The file fixes residence, applies the employment article, and sequences the two returns so the credit lands where it is usable.
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Case study 3
Treaty Relief Claimed on a Cross-Border Estate
The estate article can extend a proportionate credit where the two systems would otherwise both tax the same asset. Claiming it requires a valuation and a disclosure the estate may not expect to make.
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Case study 4
A Non-Resident Estate Holding US Assets
US situs assets sit inside the US estate tax net regardless of where the owner lived, and the exemption available to a non-resident is not the resident one. The file establishes situs asset by asset before any relief is claimed.
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Case study 5
Documentation Built to the US Standard
The US requirements differ from the OECD-aligned ones in what has to exist at the time of filing, and a file prepared for one regime can leave the other unprotected. The engagement builds to whichever governs.
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Case study 6
Selling Into the US Without an Entity, and Filing in Several States
State obligations are set by each state, and a treaty does not reach them. The review measures activity against each state's own thresholds and separates the states where registration is required from the ones where it is not.
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Case study 7
A Family Trust Abroad With Reporting on Both Sides
A trust settled in one country and a beneficiary living in another produces reporting for the trust, the settlor and the beneficiary, on different forms and different dates. The engagement maps who files what before anything is prepared.
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Case study 8
Social Security Paid Twice Until a Certificate Arrived
Income tax relief does not reach a social security charge; only an agreement does, and only against a certificate from the system actually being paid into. Obtaining it is the work, and it is often retrospective.
Read how this one runsAll case studies — every published engagement in one place.
Core International & Cross-Border Tax Services
International Tax Planning & Advisory
Strategy and compliance for income, assets and families spread across borders.
One coordinating team: filings on every side of the border are sequenced so treaty relief and foreign tax credits are claimed once — and in the right country.
U.S. & Cross-Border Tax Returns
Dual filers: U.S. citizens in Canada and Canadians with U.S. income run two parallel systems — we prepare both, in the right order, every year.
Expat & Emigration Tax
The move year is its own project: the elections and valuations filed that year decide the next decade of both countries’ returns.
Non-Resident Canadian Tax
Default withholding is 25% of gross: elective returns routinely turn over-withheld rent and pensions into refunds.
Transfer Pricing & BEPS
Documentation prepared with the return is the cheapest insurance in international tax; reconstructing it during an audit is the most expensive.
Tax Treaties & Withholding
Relief is only as good as the paperwork claiming it — we build treaty positions that survive review on both sides.
Cross-Border Estates & Trusts
Wills drafted for one country routinely misfire in the other — deemed disposition here, estate tax there, credits in between.
Global Investments & Reporting
Information returns carry the sharpest penalties — $25 a day whether or not any tax is owing. We keep them clean and on time.
Cross-Border Corporate Tax
Expansion raises the same four questions every time — entity, PE, repatriation, payroll. We answer them before the tax authorities do.
India Tax for NRIs & Returning Residents
The deduction is taken on the sale price, not the gain — which is why an NRI property sale strands cash unless the certificate is applied for before closing.
Canadian Tax with a Foreign Element
Residency is decided on facts, not on a form — and the year you arrive or leave is the one where the largest amounts turn on the smallest details.
UAE Tax for Expats & Their Home Country
A zero-tax country is only half the answer — the question that decides the bill is whether the country you came from still treats you as resident.
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Technology & SaaS
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Professional Services Firms
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Cross-Border Real Estate
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Importers, Exporters & Manufacturers
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- Customs value vs transfer price
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Athletes, Artists & Entertainers
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Remote Workers & Digital Nomads
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Investment Funds & Holding Companies
Holding structures live or die on treaty access, beneficial ownership and substance — the MLI's principal-purpose test now sits over every arrangement.
A holding structure is only as good as its reporting. Foreign affiliates, accrued passive income and distributions each carry their own return, and the penalties on those attach to the form rather than to any tax being owed — so a structure that saves tax can still cost money if the information returns are late.
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