Verified against official sources — 31 Oct 2026

Leaving the USA for Good: Bank Accounts, Taxes, Retirement Money and Loose Ends

NEW Published 31 October 2026

The site you are reading explains how to arrive in the United States and how to live there. It has said nothing about leaving — yet the questions are constant wherever departing students and workers gather: end of OPT, an H-1B move, a decision to go home. What happens to the US bank and brokerage accounts, the 401(k), the tax record, the Social Security number? This article covers the US side of a permanent departure, from the official texts only.

SECTION 01Before You Go: the Paper Trail — Your Departure Record and Your Records

RULE — Your comings and goings sit in one record, and you can pull it yourself. CBP has automated Form I-94 at air and sea ports of entry: "The paper form is no longer provided to a traveler upon arrival except in limited circumstances, and at land ports of entry." If you need your I-94 — the record of admission — "for verification of alien registration, immigration status, or employment authorization, it can be obtained from https://I94.cbp.dhs.gov". Our guide to visas, status and the I-94 explains what that record is; the point for a leaver is that your departure becomes part of the same history, and you can check what it says.

RULE — Leaving by air or sea records itself; leaving by land may not. For air and sea departures, CBP records exits from the information carriers supply: in its own words, CBP collects departure information from "commercial air or sea carriers using the biographic information provided by the carrier's manifest information as well as carrier-collected biometric information, when available". Land borders work differently, and CBP says so plainly: "When exiting the United States at a land border, aliens subject to I-94 requirements are encouraged to report their departure to CBP, so that the agency can record their exit from the United States. If such travelers do not report their departure to CBP, their departure may not be properly recorded, and accordingly, it may appear that such travelers have overstayed their authorized stay." CBP's published ways of reporting include stopping at a land port of entry and — when entering Canada — handing a paper I-94 to the Canadian border agency, which returns it to CBP. If your permanent departure is a drive across a land border, treat recording it as a task, not a formality.

ADVICE — Keep your own evidence of the day you left. No rule in the texts read orders you to keep boarding passes, but the departure record is the document future questions are answered from (see the last FAQ), and the tax process in Section 02 runs on paper you supply — the IRS's permit appointment list asks for two years of returns, receipts for tax paid, and an employer statement of wages and withholding up to your departure date. Download your I-94 travel history before you go, and keep returns, W-2s and final payslips where you can reach them from abroad.

SECTION 02The Departure Permit Question: Forms 2063 and 1040-C, Who Needs One, Who Is Exempt

RULE — The general rule is real, and so is its exemption list. The IRS states the baseline without qualification: a departing alien clearance, "also known as the sailing permit or departure permit, is a document most aliens must secure from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) before leaving the United States. It is proof that you have settled your U.S. tax liabilities before a planned, long term or permanent departure." Its tax-clearance topic adds that a permit, where required, "must be presented at the point of departure". You obtain one by filing Form 1040-C or Form 2063 — but first check the exemptions, because they decide the question for most of this article's readers.

RULE — Most F and J leavers are exempt — including students who worked. The IRS's list of aliens "not required to obtain sailing or departure permits" includes alien students, industrial trainees and exchange visitors — and their spouses and children — who enter on an F-1, F-2, H-3, H-4, J-1, J-2 or Q visa, provided they "receive no gross income from U.S. sources while in the United States under those visas other than the exceptions described in Publication 519". The clearance page spells those exceptions out: allowances covering the expenses of study or training, the value of services or accommodation furnished with it, "income from employment authorized under U.S. immigration laws", and deposit interest not effectively connected with a US trade or business. Read that list against a typical student history — on-campus work, CPT, OPT wages, a teaching assistantship — and it is all authorised-employment income: the exemption holds. The same is true, on the parallel category, for M-1 and M-2 students. Two cautions: the exemption is fact-specific (US-source income outside the listed kinds — unauthorised freelance income, for example — takes a student outside the category's own terms), and the IRS expects the claim to be provable: "you must be able to substantiate your claim for exemption with proper identification or by citing the applicable authority".

RULE — The other exemptions are for visitors, commuters and officials — not for workers. The remaining categories cover foreign-government representatives on diplomatic passports (with their households); employees of international organisations and foreign governments whose official pay is tax-exempt and who have no other US-source income; B-2 pleasure visitors; B-1 or B-1/B-2 business visitors present no more than 90 days in the tax year; C-1 transit travellers; border-crossing-card holders; Canadian and Mexican residents commuting to US work on wages already subject to withholding; and Defence Department military trainees leaving on official orders. The visitor and transit categories stop applying if the IRS believes the person had taxable income and their leaving would hinder collection. None of these describes a person who has been working in the US on an employment visa — which is the point of the next paragraph.

RULE — A departing H-1B worker generally needs the permit, and usually the short form. H-1B appears in none of the categories above, and the IRS's structure is direct: "If you don't fall into one of the above categories, you must obtain a departure or sailing permit." For most established workers the instrument is Form 2063, "a short form that asks for certain information but doesn't include a tax computation". Two groups can use it: aliens, resident or nonresident, who have had no taxable income for the current year up to departure or for the preceding year (where the time to file for that year has not yet run out); and — the case that fits a long-serving H-1B worker who has been filing as a resident alien — "[r]esident aliens who received taxable income during the tax year or preceding year and whose departure won't hinder the collection of tax as determined by the Area Director". If the IRS has information indicating you are leaving to avoid tax, Form 1040-C is required instead; and anyone with an unfiled return or unpaid tax must file and pay before a permit can issue on Form 2063. A Form 2063 permit works for all departures during the current year, though the IRS may cancel it for a later departure if collection appears jeopardised.

RULE — Form 1040-C is the full settlement, for everyone else who needs a permit. "If you must get a departure or sailing permit and you don't qualify to file Form 2063, you must file Form 1040-C." On it, "[o]rdinarily, you must report on Form 1040-C and pay the tax on all income received or reasonably expected to be received during the tax year up to and including the date of departure", together with all returns and tax due for previous years; the IRS may allow a bond instead of payment for certain years, and a permit issued this way covers only the specific departure it was issued for. One softening rule exists for people coming back: if you show the IRS that you intend to return and that your departure does not jeopardise collection, the permit can issue on Form 1040-C without paying the tax shown on it — though all due returns must still be filed and their tax paid.

RULE — The mechanics are an appointment, inside a fixed window. Permits are obtained in person, by appointment, at a local Taxpayer Assistance Center (appointment line 844-545-5640). "You should apply for the departure or sailing permit no earlier than 30 days before you plan to leave but at least two weeks in advance of your departure", and the IRS warns that some offices may not have appointments inside that window at busy times of year — so this is not a final-week task. Both forms carry a "certificate of compliance" section; signed by an agent of the Field Assistance Area Director, it certifies that your US tax obligations "have been satisfied according to available information", and your signed copy is the permit. Bring the paper the IRS lists: passport and visa, the past two years' returns with receipts, an employer statement of wages and withholding from 1 January to your departure date, proof of estimated tax payments, deduction, expense and property-sale records, scholarship and treaty documents where they apply, proof of your departure date, and a document verifying your taxpayer identification number.

RULE — Filing Form 1040-C does not end your tax year. The IRS says it in terms: "Form 1040-C is not an annual U.S. income tax return. If an income tax return is required by law, that return must be filed even though a Form 1040-C has already been filed." Tax paid with the 1040-C is taken as a credit against your annual return's liability — and there is no refund desk at the airport: "the IRS cannot provide a refund at the time of departure. If you are due a refund, you must file Form 1040 … or Form 1040-NR … at the end of the tax year to claim a refund." Section 03 is that annual return.

RULE — The "exit tax" you may have heard of is not aimed at you. The expatriation tax provisions — Internal Revenue Code sections 877 and 877A — apply, in the IRS's words, "to U.S. citizens who have renounced their citizenship and long-term residents (as defined in IRC 877(e)) who have ended their U.S. resident status for federal tax purposes". The departing-alien page ties the accompanying Form 8854 statement to green card holders surrendering a card held "in at least 8 taxable years during the previous 15 taxable years". A temporary visa holder is in neither definition; the regime is mentioned only so a departing F-1 or H-1B reader can fence it off as someone else's rule.

SECTION 03Your Final Tax Year(s): Dual Status, the Form 8843 Tail, and Filing from Abroad

RULE — A departure year is the textbook dual-status year. "You are a dual-status individual when you have been both a U.S. resident and a nonresident in the same tax year", and the IRS names the setting directly: "The most common dual-status tax years are the years of arrival and departure." (Whether you were a tax resident at all — the green card and substantial presence tests — is a separate question, covered in our guide to tax residency and the substantial presence test; this section assumes the common case: resident for part of the departure year, nonresident after.) The split is by source: "[f]or the part of the year you are a U.S. resident, you are taxed on income from all sources"; "[f]or the part of the year you are a nonresident, you are taxed on income from U.S. sources only", and foreign-source income that is not effectively connected with a US trade or business "is not taxable if you receive it while you are a nonresident".

RULE — The return is a hybrid, and it is marked as one. If you are a nonresident on the last day of the tax year — the usual position for someone who has left for good — the IRS's instruction is mechanical: file Form 1040-NR with "Dual-Status Return" written across the top, and attach Form 1040 as a statement showing the resident part of the year, marked "Dual-Status Statement". The restrictions are part of the package: a dual-status filer "[c]annot use the standard deduction" (itemised deductions remain available), cannot use the head of household rates, and "[c]annot file a joint return" — with one exception, the election available to a dual-status individual married to a US citizen or resident to be treated as a resident and file jointly, which is a choice with worldwide-income consequences, not a default.

RULE — The deadlines run from abroad, and having wages withheld changes yours. A dual-status filer who is a nonresident at year-end "generally must file no later than April 15 of the year following the close of your tax year if you receive wages subject to withholding", and "[i]f you did not receive wages subject to withholding … you must file no later than June 15". The nonresident filing page gives the same split and directs Form 1040-NR to the address shown in its instructions. Departure changes where you file from, not whether you file.

RULE — An F or J student's Form 8843 outlives the course. Form 8843 is the statement that supports excluding your days as an "exempt individual" from the substantial presence test, and the duty attaches to the year, not to your presence at filing time: "[i]f you exclude days of presence in the U.S. for purposes of the substantial presence test because you were an exempt individual … you must include Form 8843 … with your income tax return. If you do not have to file an income tax return, send Form 8843 to the address indicated in the instructions for Form 8843 by the due date for filing an income tax return." A student who leaves in September still owes an 8843 for that calendar year. Skipping it is not costless: "[i]f you do not timely file Form 8843, you cannot exclude the days you were present in the U.S. as an exempt individual" — unless you can show by clear and convincing evidence that you took reasonable steps to learn the requirements and significant steps to comply.

RULE — After the departure year, you file when the nonresident tests say so — and to get money back. A nonresident alien must file a return if they were engaged in a US trade or business during the year, or if they have US income "on which the tax liability was not satisfied by the withholding of tax at the source". There is a third, practical trigger, stated by the IRS as a reason you "must also file": if you want to "[c]laim a refund of overwithheld or overpaid tax" or claim deductions or credits. That is the shape of the tail: US-source income that is not effectively connected — brokerage dividends are the common case — is taxed "at a flat 30 percent (or lower treaty rate, if qualify)" with no deductions allowed, collected by withholding at source and reported to you; many departed people therefore have no filing duty in later years, and file in exactly the years when withholding took too much.

SECTION 04Bank and Brokerage Accounts After You Leave: Policy, Not Law

ADVICE — No closure rule exists in the official texts; the account is a contract. We state this as a property of the sources, because it cannot be quoted as a rule: across the IRS, SSA and CBP material read for this article, no US federal rule requires a departing non-citizen to close a bank or brokerage account, and no agency text claims a power to order one closed because you left. An account is an agreement between you and the institution, whose own terms decide whether it can stay open once your address and tax residence are abroad — whether it will service a foreign address, send cards overseas, or keep a brokerage account for a nonresident customer. That is why community experience contradicts itself: two leavers, two banks, two outcomes, both true. Before you leave, ask your own institution, in writing if you can, what changes when your address becomes foreign, and download your statements while access is simple. Our guide to opening a US bank account and building credit covers the accounts themselves from the arriving side.

RULE — The tax mechanics continue whether or not the account does. Keeping an account open does not keep your old tax treatment, and closing one does not end the US tax system's interest in US-source income. Once you are a nonresident alien, income from US sources that is not effectively connected with a US trade or business — brokerage dividends are the standard example — is taxed at the flat 30% rate or a lower treaty rate, collected through withholding, and reported on Form 1042-S. The IRS's withholding pages add a detail worth knowing: amounts paid to foreign persons under this regime are reported on Form 1042-S "even if no amount is deducted and withheld from the payment because the income was exempt from tax under a U.S. tax treaty or the Internal Revenue Code" — a 1042-S arriving for a year in which nothing was withheld is the system working as described, not an error. Expect the institution to ask you to certify your foreign status for withholding purposes once you tell it you have left; the rate it applies follows the withholding rules, not your old W-2 history.

RULE — The FBAR question turns on the same hinge as before: residency. While you were a US resident, your accounts abroad — the ones back home — could carry a FinCEN Form 114 (FBAR) duty; our FBAR guide sets out that duty and the definition of US resident it hangs on. This article does not re-derive it, because the departure analysis is the same hinge worked in the other direction: the duty as the guide states it belongs to US residents within that definition, and a US bank account is in any event a US account, not a foreign one. What changes on departure is your side of the hinge, not the rule — and the years in which you were resident keep the duties they had when they were lived.

SECTION 05The 401(k)/IRA Decision: Leave It, Roll It Over, or Take the Distribution

This is the one decision in the article with real tax mechanics attached, and the texts support three distinct options. None is recommended here; what follows is what each one does, at the strength the IRS states it. People whose departure follows a job loss should also read our guide to the 60 days after an H-1B job loss — the status clock and the money clock are separate, and both run.

RULE — Option one: leave it. The plan's rules, not your departure, govern. Nothing in the IRS texts read for this article makes leaving the country a distribution event or requires an account to be emptied because its owner now lives abroad. What the IRS describes is a system of elections that opens when you meet "the plan's conditions for a distribution, such as termination of employment": the administrator must give you a written explanation of your rollover options, and the choice is yours — with one exception the IRS states in numbers. "If you're no longer employed by the employer maintaining your retirement plan and your plan account is between $1,000 and $5,000, the plan administrator may deposit the money into an IRA in your name if you don't elect to receive the money or roll it over. If your plan account is $1,000 or less, the plan administrator may pay it to you, less, in most cases, 20% income tax withholding, without your consent." A large balance can generally sit where it is, on the plan's terms; a small one can be moved or paid out by default. Check your balance and the plan's rules before you leave, because "leave it" works only if you make the election — or confirm that none is needed — while the plan can still reach you.

RULE — Option two: roll it over, inside the US system. "Most pre-retirement payments you receive from a retirement plan or IRA can be 'rolled over' by depositing the payment in another retirement plan or IRA within 60 days", and "[w]hen you roll over a retirement plan distribution, you generally don't pay tax on it until you withdraw it from the new plan." The route matters more than the destination. In a direct rollover, "you can ask your plan administrator to make the payment directly to another retirement plan or to an IRA … No taxes will be withheld from your transfer amount." In a 60-day rollover — the money paid to you first — "your plan administrator or IRA trustee will withhold taxes from your distribution. If you later roll the distribution over within 60 days, you must use other funds to make up for the amount withheld" if the whole amount is to arrive. A rollover moves money between US accounts; none of the IRS texts read offers one into a foreign pension. Your home country's taxes on this money, whenever it is paid out, are a separate system, outside this guide.

RULE — Option three: take the distribution — and note which withholding world you are standing in. A distribution that is not rolled over is taxable income in the year you receive it, and the withholding depends on your position when it is paid. While you are still within the ordinary system — an eligible rollover distribution from an employer plan paid directly to you — "mandatory income tax withholding (generally at a rate of 20%)" applies, even if you intend to roll it over later. Paid to you as a nonresident alien, the payment enters the withholding regime for foreign persons: "you must withhold tax at the statutory rates shown below unless a reduced rate or exemption under a tax treaty applies. For U.S. source gross income that is not effectively connected with a U.S. trade or business, the rate is usually 30%." The IRS's own rate table adds a refinement folklore usually misses: it splits "[p]ensions paid to a nonresident alien" — the "part paid for personal services" is withheld at graduated rates, while "all other income payments subject to withholding" sit at 30%. Which parts of a given payout fall on which side of that line is the payer's determination under Publication 515, not a figure this article can fix; what the texts fix is the structure — usually 30%, a graduated-rate exception for the services part, treaty relief where a treaty provides it, and a Form 1042-S reporting the payment either way. If too much was withheld against your final liability, the recovery route is Section 03's: a return claiming the refund.

RULE — Early is expensive, before any question of residence. "If you're under age 59½ at the time of the distribution, any taxable portion not rolled over may be subject to a 10% additional tax on early distributions unless an exception applies." That additional tax sits on top of the ordinary tax and the withholding mechanics above, and it applies by age and timing, not by where you live. For a departing worker in their twenties or thirties, it is usually the largest single number in the distribution calculation — and it is a property of cashing out, not of leaving.

SECTION 06Your SSN and Your US Identity After Departure

RULE — The number is never handed to anyone else. The Social Security Administration's answer to its own question — "Are Social Security numbers reused after a person dies?" — is: "No. We do not reassign a Social Security number (SSN) after the number holder's death", adding that the numbering system "will provide us with enough new numbers for several generations into the future with no changes in the numbering system". Departure does not weaken that: nothing in SSA's texts read for this article retires, suspends or reallocates a number because its holder moved abroad. The number issued to you remains attached to you alone.

RULE — Your earnings record lives under that number, and your tax life runs on it. SSA's regulations state the record-keeping plainly: "The Social Security Administration (SSA) maintains a record of the earnings reported for each individual assigned a social security number." On the tax side, the IRS's rule is that "[a]nyone (including aliens) who files a U.S. federal tax return must have a Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN)", and on the departing-alien forms themselves "[y]ou are generally required to enter your social security number (SSN)". Put the two together — as mechanism, not as a further quoted rule — and the practical position is: the same number serves the departure-year return in Section 03, any later refund claim, and any future return to US work, where your earnings resume accumulating under the number that already holds them. Keep the number and the card safe.

ADVICE — Credit history has no official text, and this article invents none. Readers ask what happens to a US credit score on departure. No source in the IRS, SSA or CBP material governs it: credit files are kept by private bureaux under their own and lenders' practices, not by any agency whose texts this article can quote. All that can honestly be said is mechanism: a credit file does not have a departure stamp, accounts you leave open and in good standing continue to be reported by the lenders who hold them, and accounts you close stop reporting. What any bureau does with a file over years abroad is its own policy. No score, timeline or preservation promise is stated here, because no official source states one.

SECTION 07Loose Ends: a Closing Checklist

ADVICE — The items below are practical, not legal rules, except where a section above is cited. Work them while you are still in the country; almost all of them are harder from abroad.

• Records first. Download your I-94 travel history, and keep copies of your tax returns, W-2s, final payslips and bank and plan statements (Section 01). The IRS's permit process itself runs on two years of returns and receipts; your own file is the same file.
• The permit question, answered early. If Section 02 says you need one, the appointment window — no earlier than 30 days before departure, at least two weeks ahead, availability permitting — makes it a month-out task, not a final-week one.
• A calendar entry for next spring. The departure-year return (and a student's Form 8843) is due the following April or June, filed from abroad (Section 03). Note the date, the forms, and the mailing address in the Form 1040-NR instructions before US paperwork stops being routine.
• Mail and address. Give the IRS, your bank and your plan administrator an address that will actually reach you; returns and plan letters follow the address on file, and a refund is claimed on the annual return, never at departure (Section 02).
• The lease and the deposit. A tenancy is a contract: its end date, notice period and deposit mechanics are in the lease and state law, not in any federal departure rule. Our guide to renting your first home in the USA covers the tenancy side; the departure point is only timing — a lease that outlives your plans is a cost, not a status problem, settled with the landlord, not an agency.
• State taxes do not automatically end at the border. States run their own systems with their own residency and source rules; our guide to state income tax for newcomers explains how they decide who owes what. A final state return for the departure year is the common pattern — check your state rather than assuming the federal answer carries down.
• Refunds and stragglers. Final wages, a plan distribution or a tax refund may all land after you have gone. Each has a mechanism above — Form 1042-S reporting for payments to foreign persons, the annual return for refunds — and none needs you physically present. What they need is a reachable address and the records in the first item on this list.

FAQFrequently Asked Questions

Official references and verification status

Verified on 31 October 2026 against: the IRS's Departing Alien Clearance (Sailing Permit) page (the clearance, the full exemption list including authorised-employment income in the student category, the Form 2063 and 1040-C rules, the appointment window, the papers list, the rule that Form 1040-C is not an annual return, and the Form 8854 note for long-term green card holders); IRS Topic No. 858 (compliance before departure, the six exempt categories, presentation at the point of departure, refunds); the IRS's Taxation of Dual-Status Individuals page (arrival and departure years, the source split, return mechanics, restrictions, the April 15 / June 15 deadlines); the IRS's Substantial Presence Test page (the Form 8843 duty, standalone filing, the late-filing consequence); the IRS's Taxation of Nonresident Aliens page (who must file, refunds, the flat 30% rate); the IRS's Withholding on Specific Income page (statutory rates, "the rate is usually 30%", graduated rates for the services part of a pension, Form 1042-S reporting even where a treaty exempts); the IRS's rollover pages and Topic No. 413 (rollover mechanics, the $1,000–$5,000 and $1,000-or-less small-balance rules, 20% mandatory withholding, the 10% additional tax under 59½); the IRS's Expatriation Tax page (sections 877/877A confined to citizens who renounced and long-term residents); SSA's Social Security History FAQs (numbers are not reassigned) and 20 CFR 422.103 (the earnings record); and CBP's I-94 Automation Fact Sheet and CBP's April 2025 general notice on departure recording (carrier-manifest recording at air and sea ports; the land-border warning). Four limits are flagged where they arise. First, the claim that no federal rule requires closing a bank or brokerage account is stated as a property of the texts read — an absence across the IRS, SSA and CBP material — and whether a specific account can remain open is each institution's policy, labelled ADVICE in Section 04. Secondly, the credit-history paragraph in Section 06 carries no official source, because none exists in the agencies' texts; it is labelled ADVICE, mechanism only. Thirdly, the final FAQ is PARTIALLY VERIFIED: the recording mechanism and CBP's overstay warning are quoted from CBP, but no State Department or USCIS text on how a departure history is weighed in a future visa adjudication was read, and the article says so. Fourthly, two source vintages are recorded: CBP's I-94 fact sheet is a 2021 publication (its operative sentences are carried on CBP's page as fetched), and the land-border passage is from CBP's Voluntary Self-Reported Exit general notice of April 2025 — the most specific official statement of the land-departure position we could find. No home-country tax rule, plan-specific rule or bank policy is printed in this article, because none was read in an official text.

• IRS — Departing Alien Clearance (Sailing Permit) (who needs one, the exemptions, Forms 2063 and 1040-C, the appointment window)
• IRS — Topic No. 858, Alien Tax Clearance (compliance before departure; the six exempt categories; refunds)
• IRS — Taxation of Dual-Status Individuals (arrival and departure years; the dual-status return; deadlines)
• IRS — Substantial Presence Test (exempt individuals and the Form 8843 duty)
• IRS — Taxation of Nonresident Aliens (who must file; refunds; the flat 30% rate on income not effectively connected)
• IRS — Withholding on Specific Income (statutory rates; pensions at graduated rates for the services part; Form 1042-S reporting)
• IRS — Rollovers of Retirement Plan and IRA Distributions (direct and 60-day rollovers; small-balance rules)
• IRS — Topic No. 413, Rollovers from Retirement Plans (20% mandatory withholding; the 10% additional tax under 59½)
• IRS — Expatriation Tax (sections 877 and 877A: citizens who renounced and long-term residents only)
• Social Security Administration — Social Security History FAQs (numbers are not reassigned)
• U.S. Customs and Border Protection — I-94 Automation Fact Sheet (automation at air and sea ports; records from I94.cbp.dhs.gov)
• U.S. Customs and Border Protection — Customs Bulletin, Vol. 59, No. 14 (general notice: departure recording and the land-border warning)

General educational information, not tax or legal advice. A departure with retirement money or multiple tax years involved is worth one session with a qualified cross-border tax professional.

General information only. This guide is based on official sources publicly available and checked on the date shown on this page. Visa rules change, and consular and USCIS officers decide every case on its own facts — nothing here is a confirmation or a guarantee for your individual case, and this is not legal advice. Always confirm the current requirement on the official page linked in this guide before you act, and consider a qualified immigration attorney for your specific situation.