Articles and Guides
For Advisors
Covered Expatriate Status and the Section 877A Exit Tax
An adviser’s guide to section 877A: who is an expatriate, including the long-term resident and the treaty election that ends lawful permanent residence; the three covered expatriate tests, the two statutory exceptions and the compliance cure; the mark-to-market deemed sale, the $910,000 exclusion for 2026 and the basis rules; the separate regimes for deferred compensation, specified tax-deferred accounts and nongrantor trust interests; the deferral election; a worked example; the exit-year return, Form 8854 and Form W-8CE; and the income tax treaties and the estate and gift tax treaties after expatriation. The guide gives extended treatment to the taxation of the same assets in the country to which the client moves, setting out for twelve destinations whether the acquisition cost is reset on arrival, whether the U.S. exit tax value is recognized, what exit tax that country imposes in its own right, and how it taxes a resident donor’s gifts to U.S. donees: the German linkage under section 17 EStG and the four conditions on which it can fail, the full step-up on arrival in Canada and Austria, the substantial shareholding rules of the Netherlands and Luxembourg, the Belgian tax on financial assets in force from 2026, and the historical cost retained in France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain and Ireland, together with the double taxation that follows where no step-up is given and the timing of the move that prevents it. It also covers the section 2801 tax on U.S. recipients after the 2025 final regulations and the sequence that should precede the expatriation date. 36 pages. Updated in September 2026.
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FinCEN Beneficial Ownership Reporting for Cross-Border Structures under the Corporate Transparency Act after the August 2026 Final Rule
An adviser’s guide to the Corporate Transparency Act after the final rule of August 11, 2026, effective August 14, 2026, which permanently confines the reporting obligation to foreign reporting companies and excludes United States persons as both beneficial owners and company applicants; the current filing requirements, including the substantial control and twenty-five percent ownership tests, the reach of the test to protectors, appointors, and trust beneficiaries, and the thirty-day deadlines for registration, updates, and corrections; the treatment of blockers, holding companies, trusts, and private trust companies under the final rule, structure by structure; the customer due diligence rule as a separate obligation the final rule leaves untouched; the other regimes that continue to apply, including New York’s LLC Transparency Act, the vacated and appealed residential real estate rule, Form 5472, FATCA, and the Common Reporting Standard, with a treaty map for twelve partner countries; the two certiorari petitions pending before the Supreme Court, the companion codification bills in Congress, and the Government Accountability Office’s recommendation; and current best practices for registration audits, trust attribution analysis, and closing-table readiness.
20 pages. Updated in September 2026.
Double taxation relief and death tax credit: a comprehensive review of all gift, inheritance and estate tax treaties
An adviser’s guide to the overlapping bases on which the United States and a European jurisdiction tax a death: the domicile-based conventions with Germany, France and the United Kingdom, and the parallel conventions with the Netherlands, Denmark and Austria, as the primary relief, with their tie-breakers, allocation rules, credit articles, saving-clause carve-outs and claim periods; the older situs conventions with Italy, Switzerland, Ireland and the other pre-1956 partners, with a treaty map of all fifteen treaty partners; the unilateral credit of section 2014 as the fallback, the election between the statutory and the treaty credit, and a worked example for a U.S. citizen domiciled in Germany; the reverse-direction credits under the German, French, British, Italian and Swiss statutes; the adjacent regimes of gift tax and the U.S. state death taxes; the residual double taxation that survives the lesser-of limitations, situs conflicts and timing mismatches; and the sequencing, proof and limitation periods on which the relief depends.
30 pages. Updated in September 2026.
Withholding on Dividends, Substitute Dividend Payments, and Dividend Equivalents on Foreign-Held U.S. Securities
An adviser’s guide to the withholding on an ordinary dividend paid to a nonresident and the treaty rate by recipient type under twelve conventions common in European and Canadian custody; the sourcing and character rules that treat a substitute payment on a securities loan or repo as the dividend it replaces; section 871(m) and the dividend-equivalent rules for swaps, equity-linked instruments and repos, the delta threshold and the phase-in Notice 2024-44 carried to 2027; the qualified intermediary, qualified securities lender and qualified derivatives dealer mechanisms meant to keep one dividend from being withheld upon more than once in a custody chain; foreign trusts, estates and foundations as account holders; the chapter 4 overlay; the documentation, Form 1042-S coding and reconciliation on which a reduced rate depends; refunds, double withholding and the home-country credit; and the operational failures that generate assessments.
24 pages. Updated in September 2026.
FATCA Classification of Trusts and Estates as Foreign Financial Institutions or Nonfinancial Foreign Entities
An adviser’s guide to why chapter 4 treats a trust or an estate as an entity with a classification of its own: the court test and control test that decide whether a trust is a United States or a foreign person, and the facts and circumstances that place an estate on one side of that line or the other; the investment entity test and the management prong that turns a professionally trusteed portfolio trust into a foreign financial institution, and the individual trustee, advisory mandate and private trust company confined to administrative services that do not; the registration, reporting and certification duties a foreign financial institution trust owes under a Model 1 or Model 2 agreement, and the trustee-documented, sponsored and owner-documented routes available jurisdiction by jurisdiction across the twelve countries in which the firm’s matters concentrate; the active and passive nonfinancial foreign entity distinction and the controlling-person disclosure a passive trust makes to every bank without threshold; the documentation a complex, grantor or simple trust furnishes under chapters 3 and 4 together, including the treaty claim on Form W-8BEN-E and its own limits; an estate’s own classification and the exclusion available to an account holding only a will or death certificate; underlying companies; the place of the income tax treaties; the wider reach of the Common Reporting Standard, its extension in the European Union and the United Kingdom from January 1, 2026, and Switzerland’s own delayed Model 1 agreement; and the compliance calendar and practice points that keep a structure’s classification ahead of the bank that asks for it.
32 pages. Updated in September 2026.
Classification of Payments to Foreign Persons as FDAP Income or Effectively Connected Income before Withholding
An adviser’s guide to the classification that precedes every withholding decision on a payment to a foreign person: the gross-basis regime for fixed or determinable annual or periodical income and the net-basis regime for effectively connected income, and why an error in classification produces the wrong rate, certificate, return and withholding agent; the trade-or-business threshold, the trading safe harbors of section 864(b)(2) and the attribution of a partnership’s, estate’s or trust’s business under section 875; the asset-use and business-activities tests, the source rules and the three cases of foreign-source effectively connected income; the classification of each class of income, with the certificate and the reporting route for each; U.S. real property during the hold, including the net-basis election under sections 871(d) and 882(d), and at the sale under sections 897 and 1445; partnership items under sections 1446(a), 864(c)(8) and 1446(f); estates, trusts and partnerships as payers and payees, including the trustee’s withholding under section 1445(e)(1); documentation, reporting and the withholding agent’s liability; the treaty overlay for the twelve principal partner countries, under which the business profits article and the permanent establishment test govern the tax base, the force-of-attraction rule has no counterpart, real property income and gains remain taxable at the situs and securities gains are taxable only in the State of residence; the reception of the U.S. classification in Germany, France, Switzerland and the United Kingdom; the California withholding that runs in parallel without regard to any treaty; and two worked examples of a Los Angeles trust with a German-resident beneficiary, in the year of holding and the year of sale.
52 pages. Updated in September 2026.
FBAR and Form 8938 Obligations of Estates, Trusts and their Fiduciaries Holding Foreign Accounts
An adviser’s guide to the two federal regimes that reach foreign accounts held by estates, trusts and the persons who administer them: the separate machinery of the FBAR and Form 8938; which United States person files the FBAR, on the basis of legal title or of signature or other authority, and how the executor, the trustee and the officer of a corporate trustee acquire a personal filing duty for money that is not theirs, with the single regulatory relief for the trust beneficiary and the narrow reach of the officer and employee exceptions; the specified persons and specified assets of Form 8938, the domestic trust as a specified domestic entity and the reason a domestic estate never files; the succession laws of the twelve countries in which most of the firm’s matters arise, in three models: universal succession in Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, title in the personal representative in England, Ireland and Canada, and the Austrian Verlassenschaft, with what each model means for the American heir and the American executor in the year of death; the income tax treaties, whose tie-breaker relieves Form 8938 but not the FBAR, and the intergovernmental agreements under which the partner country’s banks report the same accounts to the Internal Revenue Service; the non-willful and willful penalties after Bittner, their survival after death and the executor’s personal liability under the federal priority statute; the correction of past omissions under the procedures in force in 2026; the account inventory and the compliance calendar to be built before the first distribution; and a worked example of a Munich estate with accounts in Munich, Zurich and New York.
37 pages. Updated in September 2026.
Withholding and Fiduciary Liability on Distributions from U.S. Trusts and Estates to Foreign Beneficiaries
An adviser’s guide to the withholding and personal liability a fiduciary assumes when a U.S. trust or estate makes a distribution to a beneficiary abroad: the corpus and distributable net income characterization required under the Subchapter J conduit, the U.S.-source fixed or determinable annual or periodical income subject to withholding and the exemptions that narrow it, the two opposite errors on capital gains and the FIRPTA regime that applies instead to a U.S. real property interest, the documentation each type of beneficiary must furnish and the identifying numbers a treaty claim requires, the operative withholding rate under each of twelve income tax conventions for dividends, interest, royalties and retirement income, the liability that sections 1461 and 1463 and the related penalty provisions place on the withholding agent, the responsible-person and transferee liability that can reach an executor personally, and the practice points that sequence documentation, withholding, deposit and reporting before a distribution is released.
23 pages. Updated in September 2026.
Marital Property Regimes in Western Europe and their Effect on the U.S. Estate Settlement
An adviser’s guide to why the matrimonial property regime must be identified before the U.S. gross estate can be sized; the three families of matrimonial property law and the statutory default regime of each Western European jurisdiction; the participation regimes of Germany and Switzerland and the German equalization claim at death; which law governs the regime of a couple that has relocated, under the EU Regulation, the Hague Convention, national conflict of law rules and the rules applied in a U.S. forum; the composition of the U.S. gross estate, the community property basis adjustment, the marital deduction and the qualified domestic trust; the estate tax treaties that address spousal transfers and community property; the gift tax and reporting consequences of a change of regime; and the practice points that follow.
30 pages. Updated in September 2026.
QDOT and Other Transfers to a Non-Citizen Spouse under the IRC Rules and the Tax Treaties
An adviser’s guide to the citizenship test that governs the marital deduction and the three transfer tax positions domicile assigns, lifetime gifts and the $194,000 annual exclusion for a non-citizen spouse, jointly held property and the marital property regimes, the qualified domestic trust required to preserve the deduction at the first death, retirement accounts, annuities and life insurance, the treaty marital relief available under the German, French and Canadian conventions and the domicile protection of the other conventions, portability, the credit for tax paid, naturalization and expatriation, the state estate taxes, the calendar of the first death, and the steps a couple takes while both spouses are alive.
30 pages. Updated in September 2026.
Blocker Structures for U.S. Securities and U.S. Real Estate Held by Nonresident Non-Citizens
An adviser’s guide to the situs rules that place a nonresident’s directly held U.S. shares and U.S. real property within the estate tax above a $60,000 exemption equivalent, the estate tax conventions that remove the securities exposure for domiciliaries of six countries and prorate the unified credit for nine, the foreign corporation as the residual answer for a securities portfolio, the single foreign corporation and the two-tier structure for real property, the income tax treaty rates that price them and their exit mechanics, the trust, partnership, leverage and insurance alternatives, the substance, personal-use and reporting disciplines that keep a structure effective, the home-country rules that reach the structure from the other side, and the restructuring owed to U.S.-person heirs.
23 pages. Updated in September 2026.
Backup Withholding, Taxpayer Identification Numbers and the ITIN Requirement for Foreign Beneficiaries of U.S. Estates and Trusts
An adviser’s guide to the two withholding regimes that reach a foreign beneficiary of a U.S. estate or trust, backup withholding under section 3406 and chapter 3 withholding, and to the documents that separate them; the presumption rules that decide how an undocumented payee is treated; the cases in which a foreign taxpayer identification number carries a treaty claim and those in which only a U.S. number will do; the treaty map for twelve partner countries; the mechanics of Form W-7 and of the employer identification number for estates and trusts; the TIN matching program and the notice cascade that follows a mismatch; the FIRPTA numbers; the refund path; and the practice points that keep identification ahead of distribution.
24 pages. Updated in September 2026.
Art, Collectibles, and Tangible Personal Property in the Cross-Border Estate
An adviser’s guide to the situs rule for tangible personal property and the transit doctrine; the estate and gift tax treaties, which for most clients decide the question before the Code is reached; the works-of-art exemption of section 2105(c) and its New York and Minnesota analogues; the gift tax on objects located in the United States; ownership structures, storage and the logistics of location; valuation, appraisal and the Art Advisory Panel; the import, export and cultural-property regimes on both sides of the Atlantic; the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act as amended in April 2026; and the administration of a collection after the collector’s death.
22 pages. Updated in September 2026.
When an Immigrant Owns a Foreign Company: CFC, Subpart F, GILTI (Now NCTI), and Form 5471
A guide for U.S. advisers on the foreign company owned by an immigrant client that becomes a controlled foreign corporation on the client’s residency starting date: the U.S. shareholder and attribution tests, the Subpart F and net CFC tested income (NCTI) inclusions under the 2026 rules, the section 962 election, the high-tax exception, the Form 5471 filing obligation and its penalties, the priority of the CFC rules over the PFIC regime, and the check-the-box election available only before residence begins.
11 pages. Updated in August 2026.
The Accidental American: Compliance and the Path to Renunciation
A guide for advisers to the client who is a U.S. citizen by birth or descent and has never known of, or never acted on, that citizenship: the identification of such clients by foreign banks under FATCA, the measure of the tax and penalty exposure, the Streamlined Foreign Offshore Procedures, the Relief Procedures for Certain Former Citizens, the delinquent submission procedures, the renunciation procedure at the consulate, and the covered expatriate test that is applied before any oath of renunciation is taken.
10 pages. Updated in August 2026.
Ancillary Probate and Administering a Nonresident’s U.S.-Situs Assets
A guide for advisers on the U.S. administration of a nonresident’s U.S.-situs assets: the assets for which a court proceeding is required and those collected through the institutions holding them, ancillary letters of administration in the situs state, the statutory executor duties that section 2203 imposes on whoever holds U.S. assets, Form 706-NA and the transfer certificate that releases the accounts, the estate tax treaties that may exempt categories of assets the Code would tax, and the parallel conduct of the information, tax and authority tracks of a multi-jurisdiction administration.
10 pages. Updated in August 2026.
For Fiduciaries
So You Are the Executor: A Personal Representative’s Guide to a Cross-Border Estate
A plain-language guide for the person named executor or personal representative of a cross-border estate: the personal liability of a fiduciary who distributes before the taxes of either country are paid, the reasons banks freeze a decedent’s accounts, the estate tax and the income tax of the administration period, the beneficiaries’ own reporting obligations, the credit mechanisms that prevent double taxation, and the order in which the steps of a two-country administration are taken.
8 pages. Updated in August 2026.
For Individuals
Art Collections Owned by Non-U.S. Collectors: United States Tax, Export and Provenance Rules
A guide for collectors and their families to the location rule that decides the United States estate tax on art and other objects; the tax treaties, which for German, British, French, Swiss and Italian collectors decide the question before the Code is reached; the museum-loan exemption; the gift tax on objects handed over in the United States; storage, ownership structures and the movement of objects; valuation before the Internal Revenue Service; whether a work may leave Europe at all; the permanent exposure of works with a gap in their wartime history; and what happens to a collection when the collector dies.
16 pages. Updated in September 2026.
Investing in U.S. Securities as a Non-U.S. Person: What You Need to Know
A guide for the non-U.S. investor on the three regimes that govern a U.S. brokerage account: the 30 percent withholding on dividends and the treaty rates claimed on Form W-8BEN, the general exemption of capital gains and portfolio interest from U.S. income tax, and the U.S. estate tax of up to 40 percent on U.S. securities above an exemption of about $60,000, the account remaining frozen at death until the custodian receives a transfer certificate from the Internal Revenue Service; together with the holding structures and treaties that reduce the exposure.
10 pages. Updated in August 2026.
French Inheritance and Gift Tax for U.S. Citizens With Assets in France Under the France-United States Estate and Gift Tax Convention
A guide for the U.S. citizen with assets in France on how the France-United States estate and gift tax convention allocates taxing rights: the fiscal domicile analysis under Article 4, the French property categories taxable under Articles 5 to 9 while the treaty domicile stays American, the allowances and rates that apply to French heirs, and the credit mechanics once France becomes the domicile.
15 pages. Updated in September 2026.