Hello All,
Hope you are all enjoying the antics of the Irish at the Uefa cup! Has anyone with a U.S Green Card moved back to Ireland and kept it? Is this allowed? I am thinking of keeping my green card status and would love to hear from those who are in the same position, or if they had to give it up and why?
I found the following on one of the US government webpages:
A Green Card is valid for readmission to the United States after a trip abroad if you do not leave for longer than 1 year. If your trip will last longer than 1 year, a reentry permit is needed.
A lot more details on this page:
https://www.uscis.gov/green-card/after-green-card-granted/international-travel-permanent-resident
The link that David provided covers what you need to do from a legal perspective. To offer some personal experience, I have re-entered the US after an extended period of time, without hassle. But, I think it is down to the diligence of the immigration officer in deciding whether or not to quiz you further.
If you plan to live in Ireland, I'm guessing that sooner or later, you'll lose the entitlement to keep the GC.
I am in the same boat! What you said, Liam, is puzzling to me - I guess I would expect the rules to be pretty specific and strict. I guess we can all report back in a few years 🙂
Spoke to immigration lawyer and foreign estate planner to get their advice.
Immigration lawyer said the rules are not like before where you can just entry the U.S once a year, own property and bank accounts. We might get away with it for a year or 2, but expect green card to be revoked. Spoke to a foreign estate planner to get some tax advice regarding US citizen married to non-citizen living abroad. His first response was to wait till citizenship before doing the move because that is one of the most complex IRS issues. To summarize: IRS only gives the non-US citizen living abroad a martial inherence estate tax exemption of $60k on US assets with rest being taxed at 40%. If we were both citizens it's unlimited exemption. He explained ways around it with types of estate trust, yearly gifting, investment accounts structuring ect ect but plan on spending $500-$1000 to update trust 1-2 years (expat taxes are hard enough). He recommended waiting 6-10 months till citizenship to save the headaches down the line, especially if the surviving spouse is the non-US citizen
Thanks for the update Carol. The estate tax issue is a valuable tip. Just so I'm clear, are you talking only about property/assets that you would keep in the US? In other words the IRS couldn't try to reach in and make a grab for any Irish assets, correct?
The IRS regards it as global reach for assets owned or co-owned by US citizens. Ireland has had full sharing of data on assets even before FATCA which requires banks to report the information directly.
One of the corollaries of FATCA is it applies to all accounts a US citizen may benefit from. One of the examples I ran across was a business person who was not a US citizen. Even though they had a separate account the IRS wanted FATCA reporting on it because it was part of the estate the spouse who was a citizen might inherit.
David, in that example there'd be no obligation on the part of the non-US citizen to comply, right? Provided they were not living in the US is what I'm saying.
The obligation with FATCA is for the bank to comply or face a 30% tariff on transactions with US markets.