Moving to Argentina from the US: both countries tax your worldwide income, and there is no treaty between them

For an American, moving to Argentina divides the way every move on this site divides: the Argentine half, and the half governed by the country you are leaving. What makes this one different is that the second half does not end.

Every other origin page here hangs on a treaty article. The British pension question is settled by article 18(1) of the 1996 convention. The Canadian pension keeps a 15% source tax under article 18(2). The South African treaty door to the Emirates is open because the agreement defines an Emirati resident by Emirati law. There is no such article here, because there is no treaty.

The short answer. The United States taxes citizens and resident aliens on worldwide income wherever they live, so there is no departure test to pass and no date on which the obligation ends. Argentina taxes residents on worldwide income after twelve months on temporary permits, which is the fastest clock in this set. There is no United States–Argentina income tax treaty: the IRS's own list of income tax treaties, page last reviewed 3 January 2026, names Armenia, Australia, Austria and Azerbaijan under A and no Argentina. What the two countries do have is FATCA, an information agreement signed 5 December 2022, under which Argentine financial institutions report American account holders automatically. Information flows between them; relief does not.

The American half of this move is the only one in this set where leaving changes nothing

On the IRS's own wording, a citizen or resident alien living abroad is "taxed on your worldwide income". There is no residence test to fail your way out of, no day count to manage, and no equivalent of the Canadian question about residential ties or the South African question about intention. A US citizen in Buenos Aires files with the IRS on the same basis as a US citizen in Boston.

That is why this page is organised differently from the other origin pages. Elsewhere the question is how to stop being taxed by the country you left. Here the question is what reduces a bill that does not stop, and the answer is in American domestic law rather than in a treaty.

There is no US–Argentina income tax treaty, and the IRS's own list is where to check

The IRS publishes a page titled "United States income tax treaties — A to Z", which lists every country with which the United States has an income tax treaty in force. We read it on 11 November 2026; the page's own stamp reads "Page Last Reviewed or Updated: 03-Jan-2026".

Under A it names Armenia, Australia, Austria and Azerbaijan. There is no Argentina entry anywhere on it. The list also contains an entry called "United States Model", which is a model text rather than a treaty partner, and three entries carrying the caution that a treaty is partially suspended or terminated — so the list is not simply a roll of friendly countries, and it is maintained.

What the absence means in practice is specific, and worth setting out item by item, because each of these is something the other origin pages on this site rely on:

• No residence tie-breaker. When two countries both treat you as resident, a treaty's residence article decides between them in a fixed order. With no treaty, both claims stand.
• No pension article. The Canadian convention caps Canada's tax on a pension paid to a Portuguese resident at 15%; the British convention with Argentina assigns a pension to the state of residence. Neither kind of rule exists here.
• No reduced withholding at source. Treaty tables exist to lower the rate at which the source country may tax dividends, interest and royalties. Without one, the domestic rate applies on each side.
• No mutual agreement procedure. There is no treaty body to take a double-taxation dispute to.

What exists instead is an information agreement, signed 5 December 2022

The absence of a tax treaty is not an absence of contact between the two tax authorities. The IRS publishes a "Competent Authority Arrangement between the Competent Authorities of the United States of America and the Argentine Republic", and what it implements is worth reading precisely.

It gives effect to the agreement to improve international tax compliance and to implement FATCA, signed 5 December 2022, and that agreement was itself entered into under the Tax Information Exchange Agreement signed at Buenos Aires on 23 December 2016. The information to be exchanged is account information on reportable accounts, provided by Argentine financial institutions and in some cases American ones, exchanged automatically within nine months after the end of the relevant calendar year, and the arrangement applies to exchanges "including reporting for calendar year 2023".

So the asymmetry is exact. An American's Argentine bank account is reported to the IRS on an annual cycle by agreement between the two states. An American taxed twice on the same income has no agreement between the two states to turn to. Information travels on a treaty-like instrument; relief does not travel at all.

In the copy of the arrangement we read, the signature blocks are blank — it carries "Date" lines and no dates — and the text provides that it becomes operative on the later of the FATCA agreement's entry into force and the last signature on the arrangement. We therefore do not state a date on which the arrangement itself became operative, only the dates it names for the agreements it rests on.

The foreign earned income exclusion for 2026 is $132,900, and it covers only earned income

The main relief in American domestic law for someone living abroad is the foreign earned income exclusion. For a taxable year beginning in 2026 the amount is fixed by Revenue Procedure 2025-32, section 4.39, which states that "the foreign earned income exclusion amount under § 911(b)(2)(D)(i) is $132,900".

Two limits on it matter more than the figure. The first is in its name: it excludes earned income — what you are paid for working — and nothing else. Investment income, rental income, pension income and capital gains are outside it. The second is that it must be claimed, and claiming it requires meeting one of two tests.

The IRS states the two tests as follows. The bona fide residence test asks for "a bona fide resident of a foreign country or countries for an uninterrupted period that includes an entire tax year". The physical presence test asks for being "physically present in a foreign country or countries for at least 330 full days during any period of 12 consecutive months". There is also a separate housing exclusion or deduction, which the IRS describes as the ability to "exclude or deduct certain foreign housing amounts", with a deduction rather than an exclusion for the self-employed.

The IRS page most people will find still prints the 2023 figure

This is the correction on this page, and it is a correction to an official source rather than to a commercial one.

The IRS's own landing page on the foreign earned income exclusion carries the stamp "Page Last Reviewed or Updated: 12-Jun-2026". Its most recent exclusion amount is "$120,000 for 2023", and it says the amount is "adjusted annually for inflation" without giving a later year. A reader who takes the figure from the most findable official page on the subject is therefore three years and $12,900 out of date, on a page reviewed five months ago.

The current figure is in the revenue procedure, quoted above: $132,900 for 2026, against $130,000 for 2025. We publish the revenue procedure's number because the revenue procedure is the instrument, and we record the discrepancy on our sources page rather than quietly using the better figure.

The 330 days the IRS counts are not the 330 days South Africa counts

This is the kind of thing only visible from having read both, and it catches people who have read one.

The same number, 330 full days, appears in American and South African law for opposite purposes and with opposite construction.

The American test also has mechanics the South African one does not. A full day is "a period of 24 consecutive hours, beginning and ending at midnight" and you "must spend the full day in a foreign country or countries for that day to be counted"; and "the time you spend on, or over international waters does not count as time in a foreign country". So a day of travel is usually not a qualifying day in either direction.

An American who has read about the South African rule and assumes his own 330 days must be unbroken will plan a year he does not need to. An American who has read about his own rule and assumes South Africa's days can be accumulated will lose a residence cessation he thought he had. The pages are moving to Dubai from South Africa and this one, and the numbers are a coincidence rather than a shared standard.

Argentina taxes your worldwide income after twelve months on temporary permits

The Argentine half is the same for an American as for anyone, and it is proved on other pages of this site where the instrument is quoted.

Article 116(b) of the Income Tax Law makes a foreigner an Argentine tax resident after twelve months on temporary authorisations, taxed on worldwide income. That is the fastest clock on this site, and two consecutive 180-day terms come to 360 days under that line. The residence routes themselves — pensionado for a foreign pension and rentista for income from foreign assets, each asking five times the minimum wage, 1,956,000 pesos a month in October 2026 and rising every month to 2,185,000 by April 2027 — are in relocating to Argentina, with the remote-work route under Disposition 758/2022 and its absence of a minimum income.

Put the two halves together and the position is unusual in this set: two countries, both taxing worldwide income, and no instrument between them to decide which gives way. Whether the Argentine months spent in another category count towards the twelve, and what happens to income earned in the meantime, is a question for an Argentine tax adviser; our digital nomad page says so rather than guessing, and that remains the honest answer here.

What this page does not state: the credit for foreign taxes, state tax and renouncing citizenship

Four absences, named rather than filled.

The credit for taxes paid to Argentina. American domestic law has a general mechanism for crediting foreign taxes, and Argentine law has one of its own. We did not read either for this page, so this page gives no rule, no limit and no form. That is the gap most worth closing with a professional, because with no treaty the credit is the whole of the relief machinery.

State tax. The figures above are federal. Whether a US state continues to treat you as resident after you move abroad is state law, we read no state instrument, and so this site says nothing about it — including nothing reassuring.

Giving up citizenship. American law attaches consequences to expatriation that it does not attach to moving. We did not read them and this page describes none of them.

Whether a treaty is in negotiation. The IRS list records treaties in force. It does not record negotiations, and we read no source on them, so we say nothing about whether this will change.

Which jurisdictions on this site have a US tax treaty, and which do not

From the same official list, read once, with a consequence for four other pages here.

• Portugal, Greece, Malta and Cyprus are on it. An American moving to any of the four has a treaty whose residence and pension articles decide the questions this page cannot answer.
• The United Arab Emirates is not on it. There is no entry for it under U, where the list names Ukraine, the USSR, the United Kingdom, the United States Model and Uzbekistan.
• Argentina is not on it.

So of the six places this site covers, the two that are sold hardest on tax — the Emirates for having no income tax, Argentina for being cheap — are the two where an American has no treaty. That is the opposite of the way both are marketed, and it follows from one page published by the IRS.

The order to do this in

1. Accept that the American side does not switch off, and plan around the bill rather than for its end. No arrangement of days or ties ends a citizen's filing obligation.
2. Decide which of the two tests you will meet, before the move rather than after. The bona fide residence test needs an uninterrupted period covering an entire tax year; the physical presence test needs 330 full days in twelve consecutive months, which need not be consecutive. The choice changes which calendar year your first exclusion falls in.
3. Count the twelve-month Argentine clock from the first temporary permit. It is shorter than any equivalent in this set and it is the date your worldwide income becomes Argentine-taxable too.
4. Get the credit position from a professional in both countries, not from a page. With no treaty, the credit is the only thing standing between you and the same income taxed twice, and we have not read either country's rules on it.
5. Assume the account information is already moving. Reporting is automatic and annual under the 2022 agreement, so an Argentine account is visible to the IRS by design rather than by audit.

Frequently asked questions about moving to Argentina from the US

Where each part of this is proved

The absence of a treaty, the A-to-Z list's A entries and U entries, and the presence of Portugal, Greece, Malta and Cyprus on it come from the IRS page "United States income tax treaties — A to Z", page last reviewed 3 January 2026. The FATCA dates, the nine-month exchange cycle and the calendar-year-2023 reporting come from the Competent Authority Arrangement between the competent authorities of the United States and the Argentine Republic, published by the IRS, which implements the agreement signed 5 December 2022 under the Tax Information Exchange Agreement signed at Buenos Aires on 23 December 2016. The $132,900 exclusion comes from Revenue Procedure 2025-32, section 4.39. The worldwide-income statement, the two tests and the housing exclusion come from the IRS page on the foreign earned income exclusion, page last reviewed 12 June 2026, whose own most recent figure is $120,000 for 2023; the 330-day mechanics come from the IRS page on the physical presence test, page last reviewed 14 March 2026. All were read on 11 November 2026 and each is set out on the sources page.

The Argentine side: the twelve-month residence rule under article 116(b), the pensionado and rentista thresholds and the remote-work route in relocating to Argentina and the digital nomad page; the pension position for a British origin, and the direction HMRC's own table is written in, in moving to Argentina from the UK; the two-year naturalisation clock and the court case over the investment route in Argentine citizenship; what living in the capital costs, with a month attached to every figure, in expat life in Buenos Aires; the retirement route in retiring in Argentina; and the rural land limits, switched off and on twice in a year, in buying land in Argentina. The other origins, where a treaty does the work: moving to Dubai from Canada or India, moving to Dubai from South Africa and moving to Portugal from Canada, India or South Africa.