For a French executive, the move to America is a tax event before it is a logistics event: the exit tax, the equity calendar and the US entry rules all crystallize on one date.
In our founder's roadmap we stated the rule in four words: structure first, mobility second. This article is the mobility half, written for the French executive or founder whose American chapter is no longer a project but a date: a transfer within the group, a startup following its market, a sale that makes the move possible. On that date, three tax systems fire simultaneously: the French exit tax crystallizes the latent gains, the French sourcing rules split the equity compensation, and the American residency rules begin counting, with no step-up for what came before.
None of these mechanisms is avoidable, and none is fatal. What they punish is not the move but the unsequenced move: the executive who books the flight first and asks the tax questions after has converted three manageable regimes into one expensive mess. What follows is the map we use, in the order the questions must be answered.
Part I sets out the exit tax in full. Part II deals with stock-options and BSPCE, the instruments that travel worst. Part III covers the American entry and the trap of the missing step-up. Part IV assembles the sequence.
I. The French exit tax: Article 167 bis in full
A. Who is caught, and on what
The exit tax applies to taxpayers who have been French tax residents for at least six of the ten years preceding the departure and who transfer their residence abroad holding, with their household, securities representing at least 50% of a company's profits or a portfolio whose aggregate value exceeds 800,000 euros (CGI, art. 167 bis, I, version in force since 1 Jan. 2024). On the day of transfer, the latent gains on those securities are deemed realized and taxed, together with gains previously placed in deferral, notably under the contribution-to-holding regimes. The base is the value at departure minus acquisition price: the tax is computed as if the portfolio had been sold to the moving truck.
B. The deferral: automatic or negotiated, never assumed
Payment, however, is ordinarily suspended. The deferral is automatic, with no guarantees, for transfers to an EU member state or to a state that has concluded with France both an administrative assistance convention against fraud and evasion and a mutual assistance convention for collection with a scope similar to Directive 2010/24/EU (CGI, art. 167 bis, IV). For every other destination, the deferral exists only on election, with a French representative appointed and guarantees constituted before the departure (art. 167 bis, V). Whether a given third state, the United States included, sits on the automatic side is a question the administration answers through its annual lists accompanying the dedicated declaration, and our discipline is absolute on this point: verify the destination's status for the year of the move, and where automaticity is not certain, have the guarantee file ready before the transfer, because a deferral negotiated after departure is a deferral negotiated from weakness.
C. The discharge: the clock that rewards patience
The exit tax is designed to die quietly. It is discharged, and the deferral released, where the securities are still held at the end of two years following the departure, extended to five years where the portfolio's value exceeds 2.57 million euros, and in any case upon return to France or death (CGI, art. 167 bis, VII). The counterpart is procedural: the dedicated declaration in the year following departure, the annual follow-up filings, and the sixty-day declarations upon any disposition, failures of which collapse the deferral. Read together, the regime's message is clear: the executive who moves and holds pays nothing in the end; the executive who moves and sells within the window pays French tax on gains crystallized at departure. The sale calendar, not the move itself, is where the money lives.
II. Stock-options and BSPCE: the instruments that travel worst
A. The sourcing principle: the gain belongs to where it was earned
Equity compensation follows a different logic from the portfolio: the acquisition gain is employment income, and employment income is sourced to the place where the activity that earned it was performed. An option or a BSPCE granted for French work and exercised after the move therefore splits: the fraction corresponding to French activity days remains French-source and French-taxable, whatever the holder's new residence, while the American fraction falls to the United States. France collects its share through a withholding mechanism dedicated to non-residents: the French-source gains from options, free shares and BSPCE realized by persons no longer domiciled in France bear a withholding at source, due upon sale of the securities (CGI, art. 182 A ter, version in force since 16 Feb. 2025). Leaving France does not leave the gain behind; it merely changes the collection method.
B. The BSPCE after the 2026 reform: two gains, two regimes
The BSPCE deserves its own paragraph, because its regime was restructured for bons granted from 1 January 2026: the law now splits the exercise advantage, the difference between the share value at exercise and the strike price, taxed as a salary-type advantage at the flat rate or, on election, under salary rules, with a 30% rate where the beneficiary has less than three years of activity, from the subsequent capital gain on sale, which follows the ordinary capital gains regime (CGI, art. 163 bis G, version in force since 21 Feb. 2026). For the mobile executive the split is decisive: the salary-type exercise advantage carries the sourcing analysis of employment income, and its French fraction meets the non-resident withholding, while the sale gain follows residence. An executive who exercises after becoming American has thus created a three-way allocation problem, French-source advantage, US-taxed advantage, US-taxed sale gain, on a single line of a brokerage statement.
C. The arbitrage: before or after, computed, never assumed
Whether to exercise, sell or restructure before the move is pure arithmetic, and it points in both directions depending on the file: exercising before departure concentrates the gain in the French system, sometimes at favorable qualified rates, and enters America with a clean, stepped-up position; waiting defers the cash cost but imports the sourcing split, the withholding mechanics and the American taxation of the whole into the picture. The only rule without exception is the one we gave in the roadmap: the computation happens before the residence transfer, when every option is open, instrument by instrument, year by year. After the move, the executive is no longer choosing a strategy; they are discovering one.
III. The American entry: residency without a step-up
A. Becoming a US taxpayer: earlier than expected
American tax residency arrives by green card or by the substantial presence test, the day-counting formula that captures many executives in their first calendar year, sometimes retroactively to the first day of presence. From that date, the United States taxes worldwide income: the French dividends, the rental income from the apartment kept in Paris, and the gains on everything sold. The entry date is thus a parameter to be chosen, where the calendar permits, not endured: a January arrival and a July arrival produce different first American years, and the French and American systems' treatment of the split year must be coordinated rather than discovered.
B. No step-up: the double taxation trap with the exit tax
The structural trap is the absence of any step-up in basis upon becoming a US resident: the United States computes gains from the historical acquisition price, including all the appreciation accrued during the French years. The same economic gain can therefore be taxed twice, by France through the exit tax crystallized at departure, and by the United States upon the actual sale, with credit mechanics that fit imperfectly because the two countries tax different events in different years. The planning answers are known: realize the gains France will tax anyway before departure, enter America with a high basis; or hold through the French discharge window so that the French layer disappears and only the American tax remains; or, for the largest files, restructure before the move. What never works is the passive middle: moving with a large latent gain, selling inside the French window, and paying both.
C. The rest of the entry checklist
The entry triggers everything this desk has catalogued for US persons: the portfolio must be purged of the funds America punishes, starting with the assurance-vie and its PFIC contents; the account inventory must be built for the FBAR and its French-product traps; and any trust in the family's orbit enters the 3520 universe. The executive's family deserves the same review: a spouse's accounts, children's savings, each acquires an American dimension on the same date.
IV. The sequence
A. The order of operations
Assembled, the calendar reads as follows. Twelve to six months out: the inventory, securities, deferred gains, options and BSPCE grant by grant, and the exit tax simulation with and without pre-departure realizations. Six to three months out: the structural decisions, exercises and sales to be executed under French residence, the corporate structure of the American activity installed as the roadmap prescribes, and the deferral file, guarantees included where the destination requires them, ready for signature. The final quarter: the portfolio clean-up, the account mapping, the choice of the departure date against both countries' calendars. After the move: the dedicated French declarations filed on time, every year, because the cheapest exit tax is the one discharged by patience and lost by a missed filing.
B. Our position
The exit tax has a terrible reputation and a merciful design: automatic or negotiable deferral, discharge for those who hold, full restitution for those who return. The instruments that genuinely hurt the mobile executive are the ones nobody simulates: the options exercised in the wrong country, the BSPCE whose salary-type advantage stays French while its holder has stopped being so, the American tax on a decade of French appreciation. All of it is arithmetic, and all of the arithmetic is available before the move and unavailable after. Our position is therefore the same discipline we apply to companies, transposed to the executive: the departure date is the output of the analysis, never its input.
Conclusion
A French executive's move to the United States runs through three mechanisms that share one date: the exit tax of Article 167 bis, with its thresholds, its deferral and its discharge clock; the sourcing of equity compensation, which keeps the French fraction of options and BSPCE in the French net through the non-resident withholding; and the American entry, which taxes worldwide income from day one with no step-up for the French past.
Each mechanism is manageable; their combination punishes improvisation. The executive who inventories, simulates and sequences, realizations before departure, structure before mobility, deferral file before the flight, crosses the Atlantic with a tax cost chosen in advance. The one who moves first meets all three mechanisms at their worst, and usually meets us afterwards. The instruction fits in the roadmap's four words, read in the right order: structure first, mobility second.
Frequently asked questions
I am moving to the United States with my company shares. Will I actually pay the exit tax?
Usually not, if you hold. The tax on your latent gains is computed at departure above the thresholds (800,000 euros of securities or 50% of a company), but payment is deferred, automatically or against guarantees depending on the destination's conventional status, and the tax is discharged if you still hold the securities after two years, or five years above 2.57 million euros, and in any case if you return to France. The real cost arises if you sell inside that window, which makes the sale calendar the true decision.
What happens to my stock-options and BSPCE if I exercise them after moving?
The acquisition or exercise advantage is employment income, sourced to where you worked when earning it: the fraction corresponding to your French activity remains taxable in France, collected by a withholding at source when you sell the shares, while the American fraction and the later sale gain fall to the United States. For BSPCE granted from 2026, the exercise advantage and the sale gain follow two distinct regimes, which makes the before-or-after arbitrage an instrument-by-instrument computation to run before the move.
Does the United States give me a fresh start on my portfolio when I become a resident?
No, and this is the trap. There is no step-up in basis upon becoming a US tax resident: America computes your gains from the historical purchase price, French-era appreciation included. Combined with the French exit tax, the same gain can be taxed twice with imperfect credit relief. The answers are to realize before departure, to hold through the French discharge window, or to restructure before moving, but never to sell passively inside the window.
When should I start planning the move?
Twelve months out is comfortable, six is the minimum for a file with equity instruments. The inventory and simulations come first, the exercises, sales and structural steps must happen under French residence, the deferral file with any guarantees must be ready before the transfer, and the departure date itself should be chosen against both countries' tax calendars. After the move, the remaining work is declarative, and strict: the French filings keep the deferral alive until the discharge.