Description
Many tax-saving strategies, such as basis step-ups, fund clean-ups, entity elections and trust funding are all available before the residency starting date and essentially none of them afterwards. An hour on the sequence, the arithmetic, and the home-country tax that the same steps trigger on the other side.
Date: 2 Oct 2026
Time: 2:00 pm ET
| Audience | Financial advisors, CPAs and EAs, estate attorneys, immigration counsel, family office staff |
| Language | English |
| Knowledge level | Advanced |
| Field of study | Taxes |
| Prerequisites | Working knowledge of U.S. residency tests (session A1). Advance preparation: none. |
| Format | Live web conference, group internet based — 50 minutes of instruction, 10 minutes of Q&A |
| Credit | 60 minutes; 1.0 credit hour to be requested from CFP Board, NASBA/CPE and state CLE boards |
Many important tax-saving strategies are available only before the residency starting date. After that date the client owns unrealised gain the United States will tax, holds funds that are passive foreign investment companies, controls a company that generates Subpart F and GILTI inclusions, and has a reporting suite that switches on retroactively for the whole year.
Learning objectives
- Determine the residency starting date under each residency test and count backwards to establish the true planning window.
- Design a pre-residency basis step-up and evaluate its U.S. benefit against the home-country tax the same step triggers.
- Identify passive foreign investment companies, controlled foreign corporations and foreign trusts in the client’s holdings and remediate them before the starting date.
- Apply the section 679 five-year lookback to pre-immigration trusts and structure around it.
- Evaluate foreign pensions, private placement life insurance and foreign life policies against section 402(b), the section 7702 definition of life insurance, and the section 4371 excise tax.
Case Studies
- A German entrepreneur arriving on an EB-5, holding a GmbH and a Rürup pension: controlled-foreign-corporation status, GILTI, Form 5471 and section 402(b) all begin on day one.
- A French family with an assurance-vie contract and an SCI holding a house in Provence — a passive foreign investment company and a foreign partnership, respectively, from the moment they land.
- A Swiss client with second- and third-pillar pensions and a portfolio of Luxembourg funds, arriving in eleven weeks.
Anticipated questions
- Is a check-the-box election a taxable event in the client’s home country?
- Can any of this still be fixed after the client has arrived?
- What changes if the client already has a U.S. citizen spouse?
- Does the home country’s exit tax get a foreign tax credit in the United States?
Participant handouts:
- A pre-immigration timeline running from twelve months out to the residency starting date;
- An asset-triage worksheet;
- A first-year U.S. reporting calendar.