Visa holders · From Mexico
Mexican tax residents must give 15 days’ notice before moving to the US from Mexico: taxes there continue if they skip it.
Mexico’s Federal Tax Code presumes its nationals are tax residents unless they prove otherwise. If you keep homes in both countries, Mexico asks where your center of vital interests is. It is in Mexico if, for example, you earn over half your year’s income there or do your main work there.
Updated · Sources
Mexico’s rules for a move to the US
- 15 days
- before your tax residence changes is the latest you can give Mexico notice of the move.
- 10%
- is the most Mexico may charge on your bank interest or dividends under the treaty, once you live in the US.
- 25%
- of the whole price is Mexico’s default tax when you sell real estate there as a nonresident.
Mexico’s notice rule is in Article 9 of its Federal Tax Code, as amended to April 9, 2026.
Which of your ties to Mexico need a US form?
Your US residency start date
From the day a green card or the substantial presence test makes you a resident alien, the US taxes your income from Mexico too. Before that day, a nonresident pays US tax only on US income. Days you commute from your home in Mexico to a US job, back within 24 hours, do not count toward the substantial presence test. That holds only if you commute on over 75% of your workdays.
Mexican bank and brokerage accounts
Once the peak balances of all your foreign accounts pass $10,000 in total, each Mexican account goes on an FBAR. You file it with FinCEN by April 15, and the deadline moves to October 15 automatically. If you file single and your foreign financial assets top $50,000 at year end, or $75,000 at any time, you also file Form 8938.
Mexican investment funds
A fondo de inversión is normally a passive foreign investment company (PFIC), as most funds based abroad are. Each fund you hold generally needs a Form 8621 of its own every year. The exception is a year your PFICs total $25,000 or less at year end ($50,000 on a joint return). It covers only funds with no QEF or mark-to-market election, and only if you had no gain on selling them. You must also have had no excess distribution, meaning a payout well above your recent average.
Gifts from your family
However much your parents give, the gift adds nothing to your US taxable income. Their gifts and their relatives’ gifts count as one total, reported on Form 3520 once it passes $100,000 in a year.
A home held in a fideicomiso
A fideicomiso is a Mexican bank trust that holds title to a home in a restricted zone, where foreigners cannot own one directly. Revenue Ruling 2013-14 says a standard fideicomiso is not a trust for US tax, because the bank only holds title. You keep every other right, and no Form 3520 or 3520-A is due for it. Mexican nationals can hold such a home in their own name, so this mostly concerns a non-Mexican spouse.
Mexico’s tax on the sale price can take most of your gain on a home there.
As a US resident, you also report the home’s gain to the IRS, figured in dollars. If it was your main home for 2 of the 5 years before the sale, up to $250,000 of gain may be excluded. On a joint return, the limit is $500,000. Mexico’s tax may be credited against any US tax left.
Sale price
MXN 4M
Mexico’s default tax is figured on this whole amount.
Your gain
MXN 1.5M
It is the price less the MXN 2.5 million you paid.
Mexico’s tax
MXN 1M
That is 25% of the price, with nothing deducted for your cost.
Gain left
MXN 0.5M
Mexico’s tax takes two-thirds of the gain, before any US tax.
Article 160 of Mexico’s income tax law sets this 25% default. With a sale recorded in a public deed, you can choose to be taxed on the gain instead, at Mexico’s top income tax rate. The example shows Mexico’s tax only, in pesos.
Under the US-Mexico tax treaty, Mexico still gets to tax some of your income first.
The treaty has applied since January 1, 1994, and a 2002 protocol rewrote its dividend article. Each row assumes Mexico no longer counts you as its resident.
| Mexico | US | |
|---|---|---|
| Interest from a Mexican bank | Up to 10% Article 11(2) | Taxed |
| Dividends from a Mexican company | Up to 10% Article 10(2) | Taxed |
| A pension from a private Mexican employer | May not tax it Article 19(1)(a) | Taxed |
| IMSS benefits (Mexican social security) | Mexico alone may tax Article 19(1)(b) | Exempt US citizens included |
Under the saving clause, the US taxes its residents as if the treaty did not exist. IMSS benefits are one of the exceptions the clause lists.
Four ways a move from Mexico can cost more than it should.
Filing the notice without proof of your new residence
Even after you file the notice, Mexico can keep you as a resident if you cannot prove your new tax residence. That rule covers the year of the notice and the five years after it. An exception for countries with certain tax agreements with Mexico may not cover the US. Keep proof that the US now treats you as a tax resident.
Expecting IMSS to cover your US job
IMSS coverage cannot keep your US pay out of US Social Security tax. That takes a totalization agreement (a Social Security agreement between two countries), and Mexico and the US have none. Your employer withholds 7.65% for Social Security and Medicare from the first paycheck, on a TN or an H-1B alike. The 6.2% Social Security part stops at $184,500 of pay in 2026. Above $200,000 of pay, your employer also withholds the 0.9% Additional Medicare Tax.
Counting on the treaty to cover student pay
Article 21 exempts only money a Mexican student receives from abroad to pay for their studies and upkeep. It gives no allowance for pay earned in the US, and the treaty has no article for visiting teachers. Under the saving clause, a green card ends even that exemption.
Selling a 25% stake in a Mexican company
Mexico can tax the gain if you held at least 25% of a Mexican company in the 12 months before selling. The same goes for shares in a company that is at least half Mexican real estate by value. Mexico’s tax on that gain may count as a foreign tax credit on your US return.
We prepare your US returns while your accountant in Mexico handles the Mexican side.
We file your FBARs too, and we work alongside your contador.
- We prepare your first US return, split at the day your US residency starts, and each federal and state return after it. We keep IMSS benefits off your US income and credit Mexico’s tax on your interest and dividends on Form 1116.
- We report each Mexican account and fondo de inversión on the forms it needs: the FBAR, Form 8938 and Form 8621. You enter how many you hold in the instant quote, and each one adds to the fee. We confirm the count from your documents.
- We work out the US tax on selling your Mexican home before your residency starts and after it.
- We map out estimated payments on rent from a property in Mexico.
- Any IRS or state notice on a return we prepared, say about your Afore, is ours to answer within the fee.
- Individual return
- from $195
- Business return
- from $495
We quote a flat fee before work starts. We do not bill hourly.
Which tax questions come up most on a move from Mexico to the US?
Is there an exit tax leaving Mexico?
No. Neither Mexico’s Federal Tax Code nor its income tax law taxes gains you have not realized when you leave. The move does require a change-of-residence notice, filed at least 15 days before your tax residence changes. Skip it, and Mexico keeps treating you as a resident.
Does Mexico have a gift tax?
No, Mexico has no separate gift tax. Its income tax counts a gift as income to a Mexican tax resident. Gifts between spouses, and from parents or grandparents to descendants, are exempt whatever their size. A resident still reports gifts over MXN 600,000 in the annual return. Once you are no longer a Mexican resident, those rules generally do not reach money your family sends you.
Does my Afore go on my US tax return?
It may, but neither the treaty nor any IRS guidance we have read says how the US treats an Afore. Mexico’s social security system funds it, but private administrators run it. If the US treats it as a pension account, it may go on your FBAR and Form 8938. Form 8938 leaves out foreign social security, so that answer turns on how the Afore is classed. Its payouts could likewise count as exempt social security or as a taxable private pension. No treaty article defers US tax on an Afore’s growth.
Sources
- US-Mexico income tax convention (1992)
- Protocol to the US-Mexico convention (2002)
- Treasury, Technical Explanation of the US-Mexico convention and protocol (1992)
- Mexico, Código Fiscal de la Federación (federal tax code)
- Mexico, Ley del Impuesto sobre la Renta (income tax law)
- IRS, Internal Revenue Bulletin 2013-26 (Rev. Rul. 2013-14, Mexican land trusts)
- 26 C.F.R. § 301.7701(b)-3, Days of presence in the United States that are excluded for purposes of section 7701(b)
- 31 C.F.R. § 1010.350, Reports of foreign financial accounts
- IRS, Instructions for Form 8938
- IRS, Instructions for Form 8621 (Rev. December 2025)
- IRS, Instructions for Form 3520 (Rev. December 2025)
- Social Security Administration, totalization agreements overview
Reviewed and updated September 2026. General information, not advice for your situation.