Your French assets create federal US filings nobody told you about.
A PEA, an assurance-vie, a Livret A, a share of the family SCI. Ordinary in France. Each one lands on a US return differently, and the forms they trigger are not the ones your French adviser mentions.
This is an organizer for French nationals living in the United States. Answer questions about what you hold; it maps which federal US obligations appear to apply, when they are due, which documents to gather, and what to ask your accountant. Every line cites a primary source.
The divergences that catch people
These are the cases where French and US treatment disagree. Tax-free at home does not mean invisible abroad.
The PEA
France does not tax it while it stays wrapped. The US does not recognise the wrapper at all, and looks straight through to what is inside it.
Assurance-vie
The most common French savings vehicle, and the hardest to classify on a US return. How it is written determines which regime it falls under, and the regimes are very different.
The family SCI
A civil property company is a normal way to hold French property. To the US it is a foreign entity, and foreign entities come with information returns whose penalties do not depend on owing any tax.
Accounts you forgot are accounts
A dormant Livret A from your student years counts toward reporting thresholds that are measured on the highest balance of the year, not the balance today.
How it works
- Tell it what you hold. Instruments, property, entities, gifts. Two minutes for the scan, about fifteen for the full diagnostic.
- It applies a cited rule base. Each rule carries its primary source — the form instructions, the code section, the treaty article. Anything we have not traced to a source is excluded rather than guessed at.
- You get a document, not a verdict. Exposure map, filing calendar, documents to gather, questions for your accountant. Print it and take it with you.
Why the citations matter
Anyone can ask a chatbot about PFICs and get a fluent answer. The difference here is that every statement names the document it came from, and statements we could not trace to a primary source do not appear at all — they are held back rather than softened with a hedge. You should be able to check us. That is the whole point.