Cross-Border
California or British Columbia, priced side by side: what a move costs in salary, what it saves in tax on a long-held position, and how long the one pays for the other.
Where the two futures stand
Every after-tax dollar earned, plus the holding at what it would be worth after the tax still owed on it. A comparison, not a forecast of your savings: it assumes you bank the lot.
Years after the move
The gap, and when it turns
The same two numbers subtracted from each other. Above the line the move is still ahead; below it, staying was the better trade all along.
Year by year
| Yr | Pay, CA | Pay, BC | California | BC | BC − CA |
|---|
What this does and does not do
Rates are for the 2026 tax year: federal and California for a resident of California, federal and provincial for a resident of British Columbia. Salary is treated as the only ordinary income, and the only deductions taken are the ones everybody gets.
- The exit tax is narrower than its reputation. It is charged on expatriation, not emigration. Someone here on a work visa has no status to give up, stops being a US tax resident, and is never in scope — whatever the size of the gain they leave with.
- A green card kept is a tax residence kept. Moving to Canada without formally abandoning the card leaves you a US taxpayer on worldwide income. The step-up below does you no good while that is true, and for a long-term resident the act of claiming Canadian residence under the treaty can itself be the expatriation.
- The mark-to-market charge reaches everything. It is modelled here against the holding you entered, because that is all this page knows about. A real deemed sale takes in the house, the pension and the rest, and the exclusion is one allowance across all of it.
- The move is assumed clean, on the first day of year one. Leaving mid-year means a dual-status US return and a part-year Canadian one, which splits a single year's income between two systems and two sets of brackets.
- The exchange rate is held still. Canada works your gain out in Canadian dollars against a cost base fixed on the day you landed, so a loonie that moves afterwards creates real taxable gain or loss out of nothing but the currency. One rate throughout keeps the tax comparison clean and leaves that risk out.
- No retirement accounts, no dependants, no mortgage, no charity. Nothing here models a 401(k), an RRSP, the treaty treatment of either, tax credits for children, or itemised deductions beyond state income tax.
Arithmetic, not advice. Cross-border tax turns on residency dates, treaty positions and filings that a page of assumptions cannot see, and the sums here are worth what you paid for them. Take a real opinion from someone licensed on both sides before moving anything.