Filing season in Argentina already means wrestling with ARCA, the Agencia de Recaudacion y Control Aduanero, the agency that replaced AFIP as the country's tax and customs authority. For an American living in Buenos Aires, Cordoba, Mendoza, or anywhere else in Argentina, that is only half the job. The IRS still expects a full US tax return every year, calculated on worldwide income, regardless of how long you have lived abroad or whether you owe Argentina anything at all. Add a currency that has moved sharply against the dollar, a wealth tax that catches expats by surprise, and no tax treaty to smooth any of it over, and it is easy to see why so many Americans in Argentina either overpay the IRS or miss a filing they did not know applied to them.
Do US Citizens Living in Argentina Have to File Both Argentina and US Tax Returns?
Yes. The United States taxes its citizens and green card holders on worldwide income no matter where they live, a rule unaffected by the absence of a treaty. Argentina separately taxes individuals it considers resident on their worldwide income too, so an American settled in Argentina is generally answerable to both tax authorities on the same underlying income, just measured and reported in two different systems.
The two returns are not mirror images of each other. ARCA calculates Argentine tax liability under Argentine law, on Argentine timelines, in the local currency. The IRS calculates US tax liability under the Internal Revenue Code, on the US calendar-year and April filing deadline (with an automatic extension to June 15 for taxpayers abroad), converting foreign income and foreign tax paid into US dollars using appropriate exchange rates. Because Argentina has experienced periods of significant inflation and currency volatility, the exchange rate used and the timing of that conversion can meaningfully change the US dollar value of income and credits. Filing an accurate Argentine return does not automatically produce an accurate US return, and each has to be built from the underlying facts, not copied from the other.
Should You Claim the FEIE or the Foreign Tax Credit on Argentina Income?
For most Americans working in Argentina, the Foreign Tax Credit on Form 1116 tends to produce a better long-run result than the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion, particularly for families claiming the refundable Additional Child Tax Credit. The right answer still depends on your income mix, filing status, and how much Argentine tax you actually pay.
The Foreign Earned Income Exclusion, claimed on Form 2555 under Internal Revenue Code Section 911, shelters foreign earned income up to an annually indexed cap, $130,000 for the 2025 tax year, which comfortably covers most peso-denominated salaries even after converting a high-inflation paycheck to dollars. It only reaches wages and self-employment services, so Americans who also collect rent on a Buenos Aires apartment or realize gains selling peso investments often assume the FEIE covers that income too, when it does not, and it never reduces self-employment tax either way. Excluding wages under Section 911 also cuts off that income from generating the refundable Additional Child Tax Credit, and walking away from the election once made locks a taxpayer out of claiming it again for five years.
The Foreign Tax Credit works on a different mechanic entirely. Claimed on Form 1116 under Internal Revenue Code Sections 901 and 904, it credits foreign income tax actually paid or accrued dollar for dollar against US tax, computed separately within each income basket such as general and passive income. Argentine income tax rates run high enough that a taxpayer paying meaningful tax to ARCA typically generates a credit large enough to wipe out most or all of the matching US liability, all while keeping the child-related credits the FEIE would forfeit, and any excess credit is not wasted since it carries forward under the schedule detailed above. Compare the two mechanisms in the FEIE versus Foreign Tax Credit guide; the two elections can even be layered across different income categories within the same return.
How Does Argentina Tax Residents?
Argentina taxes individuals it treats as tax residents on worldwide income, using Argentina's own residency tests and its own definitions of taxable income, deductions, and rates. Because those rules and inflation-adjusted figures change from year to year and sit outside US tax law, this article describes them only in general terms rather than quoting specific brackets or thresholds.
One feature of the Argentine system deserves special attention for US purposes: Bienes Personales, Argentina's Personal Assets Tax. This is a wealth tax, assessed on the value of an individual's net assets rather than income earned during the year. Under Internal Revenue Code Section 901, the US foreign tax credit is available only for foreign taxes that are, in substance, income taxes. A wealth or net-worth tax like Bienes Personales generally does not qualify, so Americans in Argentina typically cannot credit what they pay under it against US income tax. It is a real cost of living in Argentina, but it usually sits outside the foreign tax credit calculation and has to be planned for separately.
Is There a US-Argentina Tax Treaty, and What If There Isn't?
No. There is no income tax treaty between the United States and Argentina, and there is also no US-Argentina totalization agreement covering Social Security taxes. That puts Americans in Argentina in a different position than expats in many other countries, where a treaty typically provides relief such as reduced withholding rates, tie-breaker rules for dual residents, and coordinated Social Security coverage so self-employment tax is not owed to both countries at once.
Without a treaty, the Foreign Tax Credit under Form 1116 becomes the primary, and often the only, mechanism for preventing double taxation on Argentine-source income. Learn how US tax treaties generally function and interact with Form 8833 for context on what other countries offer, and how totalization agreements normally resolve dual Social Security tax exposure for self-employed expats, since neither protection extends to Argentina. A self-employed American in Argentina should expect to owe US self-employment tax on net earnings with no totalization exemption available, on top of any social security-type obligations under Argentine law. Even where a treaty exists, its saving clause typically lets the US keep taxing its own citizens as if the treaty were not in effect, so Argentina's missing treaty mainly costs the reduced-withholding and tie-breaker provisions other expats rely on.
What Foreign Accounts and Assets Must You Report?
Two separate reporting regimes apply to Americans with Argentine bank or brokerage accounts, regardless of whether any tax is actually owed on the underlying funds.
The FBAR, FinCEN Form 114, kicks in once the combined value of an American's foreign financial accounts tops $10,000 at any single point in the year, and every account gets added together rather than measured on its own. Given how many Argentina-based Americans keep a peso checking account for daily spending alongside a dollar savings account, a caja de ahorro en dolares, and a local brokerage account, or cuenta comitente, that combined total can clear the threshold even when no single account looks large. Form 8938, the FATCA counterpart, runs on its own higher thresholds that shift with filing status and where the taxpayer lives, and it goes to the IRS rather than FinCEN under a completely separate set of rules. The two filings cover overlapping ground but are not substitutes for each other, so both have to be checked every single year regardless of tax owed.
Are Argentine Investment Funds Taxed as PFICs?
Generally yes. Fondos comunes de inversion, Argentina's version of the mutual fund, along with most other locally pooled investment vehicles, typically fall within the US definition of a passive foreign investment company under Internal Revenue Code Section 1297 because they earn primarily passive income such as interest, dividends, and capital gains, or hold mostly passive assets.
Landing in PFIC territory triggers a Form 8621 filing for every holding and, absent an election, the punitive excess-distribution regime under Sections 1291 and 1298: gains and distributions get spread across the full holding period, the portion allocated to earlier years is taxed at the highest rate in effect for that year, and an interest charge gets layered on top for the deemed deferral. A timely qualified electing fund, or QEF, election or a mark-to-market election can sidestep that result, but both demand specific annual data that many fondos comunes de inversion simply do not publish, which is why some American investors in Argentina shift toward US-domiciled or US-listed funds instead.
How Are Argentine Pensions and Retirement Accounts Taxed by the US?
A common assumption trips up Americans paying into ANSES, Argentina's public retirement system: that a plan Argentina treats as tax-favored must be equally sheltered on the US side. It is not automatic. The general US framework for retirement plans, found in Internal Revenue Code Sections 401(a) and 402(b), is built around domestic qualified plans, so a foreign arrangement like ANSES has to independently satisfy US requirements, or point to a specific treaty provision, before the IRS will defer tax on contributions and growth the way it would for a US 401(k) or IRA.
With no US-Argentina tax treaty, that treaty-based route to deferral simply is not on the table. Each plan has to be worked through on its own facts, looking at how it is funded and whether it functions more like a funded trust, an insurance product, or a government social insurance program. For many Americans paying into ANSES or a similar arrangement, that analysis lands on contributions or investment earnings being currently taxable for US purposes even though Argentina taxes nothing today. Review the general framework for foreign pension taxation before assuming any Argentine account is deferred, and revisit the analysis whenever the plan's structure changes.
Bottom Line
The single biggest trap for Americans in Argentina is not the dual filing itself, it is assuming Bienes Personales works like an income tax: it does not, and what gets paid into that wealth tax generally cannot offset a dollar of US tax owed under Section 901. Layer on ARCA's worldwide-income system, no treaty, and no totalization agreement, and the Foreign Tax Credit on Form 1116 ends up doing the heaviest lifting for most Argentina-based Americans, while the FBAR and Form 8938 still have to be checked every year regardless of tax owed, fondos comunes de inversion usually mean a PFIC analysis under Form 8621, and ANSES or any other local pension needs a plan-by-plan review rather than an assumed deferral. Getting all of this right, across two currencies and two tax systems, is a cross-border return that rewards an experienced preparer over a guess.
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