What happens to an RESP and the CCB when you move to the US?

You can keep the RESP. The move doesn’t force it closed and Canada’s departure tax doesn’t touch it. What stops is new contributions, once your child stops being a Canadian resident, and the CESG with them. Your own residence takes the Canada Child Benefit with it. On the US side the plan may be a foreign trust, and that question turns on Rev. Proc. 2020-17. The decision is keep it or collapse it, and the timing matters more than most families expect.

Can we keep the RESP after we move to the US?

Yes. Canadian law lets a non-resident subscriber keep an RESP open, and the deemed disposition that hits your regular investment accounts on the way out skips the plan entirely: the exit-tax rules carve out an “excluded right or interest,” and the definition lists a registered education savings plan by name (ITA s.128.1(4)(b) and s.128.1(10)). So no departure-tax bill and no forced wind-up on the Canadian side. Any obstacle you hit comes from your promoter instead.

• The Act’s residence conditions land elsewhere. One binds the promoter and the trust (ITA s.146.1(2)(c)), one binds the beneficiary at the moment of each contribution (s.146.1(2)(g.3)(ii)(A)), and the one that binds the subscriber is confined to accumulated income payments (s.146.1(2)(d.1)(i)). So nothing in the Act requires a subscriber to live in Canada to keep a plan open. Call your promoter before you move and get the answer in writing.
• This page assumes nobody in your family is a US citizen or green-card holder yet. If a parent already is, and plenty of RESP subscribers in Canada are, the US half of this started years ago and “close it before you become a US taxpayer” doesn’t describe your file. Same statutes, different starting point.

Do the CESG grants stop when we leave Canada?

They stop, and so does your ability to put new money in at all. A plan is registered on the condition that a contribution is only permitted where “the individual’s Social Insurance Number is provided to the promoter before the contribution is made and the individual is resident in Canada when the contribution is made” (ITA s.146.1(2)(g.3)). The grant condition has the same shape. The CESG is paid only where the beneficiary “is resident in Canada, in the case of a CES grant, at the time the contribution to the plan is made” (CESA s.7(c)).

What	Before the move	After the move	Source
New contributions	Allowed, up to the $50,000 lifetime limit per beneficiary	Not permitted once the beneficiary is a non-resident	ITA s.146.1(2)(g.3), limit at s.204.9(1)
CESG matching	Paid while the beneficiary is Canadian-resident	Nothing left to match, since contributions have stopped	CESA s.7(c)
Canada Learning Bond	Paid into the plan where the beneficiary qualifies	Ends too: the same paragraph requires the beneficiary to be resident in Canada immediately before the payment is made	CESA s.7(c)
Growth inside the plan (Canada)	Tax-deferred	Still tax-deferred in Canada	ITA s.146.1
Growth inside the plan (US)	No US taxpayer in the picture	The deferral election Canadian plans usually reach for doesn’t cover an RESP, and whose income the growth is for US purposes, the parent’s or the child’s, isn’t settled	A reasoned position. Rev. Proc. 2014-55 scopes that election to arrangements within Article XVIII(7) of the treaty; Rev. Proc. 2020-17, s.5.02 conditions its relief on the earnings having been reported “to the extent required under U.S. tax law” and takes no position on whether US law requires it here
Canada Child Benefit	Paid monthly	Ends with Canadian residence	ITA s.122.6

The only other way in is a transfer from another RESP, which isn’t new money, and a contribution made anyway pushes the plan offside its registration conditions. Grants already in the plan stay put for now; the repayment triggers live in the Canada Education Savings Regulations and come up mainly on a collapse or if the money never goes to school.

Can the RESP still pay for school in the US?

It can, and most families moving south never hear it. The Act’s definition of “post-secondary educational institution” isn’t limited to Canada: paragraph (b) reaches an institution outside Canada offering courses at a post-secondary level, where the student is enrolled in a course of at least 13 consecutive weeks, or, at a university, full-time in a course of at least three consecutive weeks (ITA s.146.1(1)). The catch is Canadian: a payment to a student who is now a non-resident carries 25% withholding at source (ITA s.212(1)(r)).

• The enrolment conditions for an educational assistance payment bite early, and none of them requires the student to be resident in Canada. Until the child has been in a qualifying full-time program for 13 consecutive weeks, payments out of the plan are capped at $8,000 in a rolling 12 months. A student aged 16 or over in a specified educational program, the part-time branch, runs a separate $4,000 cap over a rolling 13 weeks (ITA s.146.1(2)(g.1)). Either figure can go higher: the Minister designated for the Canada Education Savings Act may approve a greater amount in writing for a particular student.
• The Act does contemplate a non-resident beneficiary, though narrowly. ITA s.146.1(2.3) waives the requirement to provide a Social Insurance Number when a non-resident individual is designated as a beneficiary, and leaves the contribution-residence condition at s.146.1(2)(g.3)(ii)(A) untouched.
• What the US does with the same payment in the student’s hands is unsettled. Both sides of that payment come up again in the keep-or-collapse section below.

So the CESG in the plan today can still pay a US tuition bill, which is the strongest single argument for leaving it alone.

Does the IRS treat an RESP as a foreign trust?

No published guidance answers it, and the question sits underneath everything else in this section. An RESP is a trust under Canadian law, and section 6048 requires annual reporting of a US person’s ownership of a foreign trust on Form 3520 and Form 3520-A. Rev. Proc. 2020-17 exempts some plans from that reporting, and the definition it runs on at s.5.04 opens on “a foreign trust for U.S. tax purposes,” so working through its conditions already assumes the answer to this heading. Form 8938 and the FBAR survive either way.

• Purpose takes real work, and it sits in the same opening sentence as the foreign-trust threshold rather than in the numbered conditions. The trust has to operate “exclusively or almost exclusively to provide, or to earn income for the provision of, medical, disability, or educational benefits.” An RESP exists to fund education, but your contributions and the accumulated income can both come back to you without going near a school. Whether that still counts as “exclusively or almost exclusively” is arguable, and it’s the first place an examiner would push.
• Condition (1), tax-favored, and condition (2), home reporting, are the easier pair. A plan is tax-favored if contributions get a benefit “such as a government subsidy or contribution” or growth is tax-deferred, and the RESP has both. Condition (2) wants annual information reaching “the relevant tax authorities,” and it takes two Canadian provisions to cover both halves of that. ITA s.146.1(13.1) puts an information return on every RESP trustee to the Minister of National Revenue, which is the tax authority, and states no cadence. Canada Education Savings Regulations s.8(e) supplies the annual cadence, for reporting that runs to the Minister designated under the Canada Education Savings Act rather than to the CRA.
• Condition (3) requires contributions “limited to $10,000 or less annually or $200,000 or less on a lifetime basis, determined using the U.S. Treasury Bureau of Fiscal Service foreign currency conversion rate on the last day of the tax year.” The RESP has no annual cap, so the first branch fails, but the $50,000 lifetime limit in ITA s.204.9(1) sits well under the $200,000 branch at any plausible conversion rate, and the condition is an either-or. One rough edge worth naming: s.204.9(1) doesn’t prohibit a larger contribution, it taxes one under Part X.4, and whether a penalty-enforced ceiling is what “limited to” means is part of the same reasoned position.
• Condition (4) wants withdrawals “conditioned upon the provision of medical, disability, or educational benefits,” or a penalty on payments made before those conditions are met. Both halves look satisfied here: educational assistance payments need enrolment (ITA s.146.1(2)(g.1)), and the additional tax on accumulated income under ITA s.204.94 is the kind of penalty the condition describes.

You also have to be an “eligible individual,” which means being compliant (or coming into compliance) with your US filing obligations, including having reported the plan’s earnings as income where required (Rev. Proc. 2020-17, s.5.02).

The revenue procedure never names the RESP, so applying it is a reasoned position: run the conditions test and keep the file. The relief also stops at section 6048. It “does not affect any reporting obligations under section 6038D or under any other provision of U.S. law, including the requirement to file FinCEN Form 114” (Rev. Proc. 2020-17, s.3). Section 6038D is Form 8938, the FATCA form, and FinCEN Form 114 is the FBAR. Both survive on their own thresholds.

Read the eligibility test closely on the earnings, because this is where the position gets uncomfortable. It asks that you reported them “to the extent required under U.S. tax law,” which defers the question rather than answering it. No rule says an RESP’s earnings belong to the subscriber, and whether the parent or the child would be its US owner isn’t settled. Reporting them on the parents’ return is the common read while that stays open. The revenue procedure doesn’t reach that conclusion itself. The same framework decides whether a TFSA is a foreign trust, and the two come out differently.

What happens to our Canada Child Benefit after the move?

It ends. The CCB flows only to an “eligible individual,” and that definition requires the person to be resident in Canada (ITA s.122.6). Once the family gives up Canadian residence, eligibility is gone.

Tell the CRA the month you leave so payments stop on time. Amounts that keep arriving after you stop qualifying aren’t yours to keep: an excess refund is deemed payable back on the day it was paid (ITA s.160.1(1)(a)). The statute carves out the spouse of someone deemed resident, a government posting abroad for example; a family on a TN or a green card won’t fit it.

• One piece of good news inside the clawback. Paragraph (b) of the same subsection leaves amounts arising under section 122.61, which is the CCB, out of the interest that otherwise runs on an excess refund (ITA s.160.1(1)(b)), so what comes back is the payments themselves.
• The deemed-resident carve-out has a second limb worth knowing about: the spouse must also have been resident in Canada in a preceding taxation year (ITA s.122.6).

Do our kids’ accounts trigger FBAR, and who files for a minor?

They can. Once your household members become US persons, each one files an FBAR for any year their foreign accounts, counted together, top $10,000 at any point, whether they own the account or just have signature authority (IRS FBAR guidance). Kids get no pass. A child with savings from grandparents runs the same $10,000 test on their own accounts, and FinCEN treats the child as responsible for the filing, with a parent or guardian signing it when the child can’t (FinCEN, Filing for a child).

• The RESP usually lands on your FBAR as the subscriber, since you’re the one holding it, though it’s worth checking how your promoter has the plan titled before you assume.
• Form 8938 runs its own test on the same accounts and survives the Rev. Proc. 2020-17 relief untouched. Each threshold comes in two limbs. For a family living in the US filing jointly it is more than $100,000 of specified foreign financial assets on the last day of the year or more than $150,000 at any time during it; unmarried, or married filing separately, it is more than $50,000 on the last day or more than $75,000 at any time (IRS, Summary of FATCA reporting). The joint pair is not automatic in the year you arrive: IRC s.6013(a)(1) bars a joint return where either spouse was a nonresident alien at any time in the taxable year, so it takes a section 6013(g) or (h) election, and that election makes you a specified individual for the whole taxable year (Treas. Reg. 1.6038D-1(a)(2)(iii)) rather than for the part of it you were resident. Being under the last-day figure settles nothing by itself, and the IRS says outright that all of this is “in addition to” the FBAR.

Should we keep the RESP or collapse it?

Mostly it comes down to the plan’s size and whether the child is likely to study after high school. How much US reporting you can stomach is the tiebreaker, and if you want that in dollars, our published floors sit on what cross-border tax help actually costs.

	Keep it open	Collapse before leaving	Collapse after leaving
CESG in the plan	Stays for now, and can still fund an educational assistance payment; no new grant	Repaid	Repaid
Accumulated income	Stays invested, untaxed in Canada until paid out	Available only if the plan clears one of the three gates in ITA s.146.1(2)(d.1)(iii), the usual one being clause (A), the age and duration test; clear it and the income is taxed at your regular rates plus a 20% additional tax, or 12% where a similar Quebec tax is payable for the year, in which case a Quebec charge is running alongside it (ITA s.204.94(2), element D)	The accumulated-income route needs a subscriber resident in Canada when the payment is made (ITA s.146.1(2)(d.1)(i)), so this door usually closes at the border. The one statutory override, a rollover to an RDSP under ITA s.146.1(1.2), displaces that condition but not the RDSP’s own bar on taking the money in while the beneficiary is a non-resident (ITA s.146.4(4)(g)(ii))
US reporting while held	Annual: the common position is that the plan’s earnings get reported, though whose return they belong on isn’t settled, plus the Form 3520 question under Rev. Proc. 2020-17	No ongoing reporting on a plan you no longer hold, though the arrival year still gets checked: the FBAR has no part-year reporting period and runs on the calendar year, and a section 6013(g) or (h) election to file jointly puts the whole year inside the Form 8938 reporting period (IRC s.6013(h)(1), Treas. Reg. 1.6038D-1(a)(2)(iii))	Continues for as long as the plan lives
Who it tends to fit	A child likely to study, in Canada or the US, with parents fine with the reporting	Small plans where the paperwork outweighs the growth	Rarely chosen; usually the leftover position when the decision waited too long

The gate on the middle column is stiff, and it has more than one key. The usual one, clause (A), needs the plan past the 9th year after it was opened, with every beneficiary 21 or older and out of the running for an educational assistance payment (ITA s.146.1(2)(d.1)(iii)(A)). Clause (B) opens the same payment in the year the plan has to be wound up anyway, the 35th year after it was entered into or the 40th for a specified plan (s.146.1(2)(i)), by which point all it really relaxes is the age-21 limb. Clause (C) opens it where every beneficiary has died. Paragraph (d.1) is also subject to s.146.1(2.2), under which the Minister may waive clause (iii)(A), on written application by the promoter, where a beneficiary suffers from a severe and prolonged mental impairment. A joint election to roll the accumulated income into an RDSP overrides the whole of paragraph (d.1) (s.146.1(1.2)), and the constraint then moves to the receiving plan, which can’t take the money in while the beneficiary is a non-resident (ITA s.146.4(4)(g)(ii)). Miss all of those and the accumulated income can’t come to the subscriber: what’s left for that money is a payment to designated educational institutions in Canada (ITA s.146.1(1), the definition of “trust,” paragraph (d)).

The keep column has edges too. An educational assistance payment is included in the student’s income under ITA s.146.1(7), and s.56(1)(q) picks that inclusion up. Where the student is a non-resident, ITA s.212(1)(r) then charges 25% at source precisely because the amount stays out of their taxable income earned in Canada, so what follows is a flat withholding rather than a Canadian return at graduated rates. Whether a treaty article reduces that rate is a separate question, and this page doesn’t settle it. What the US does with the same payment isn’t settled by anything the IRS has published on RESPs. Neither point kills the keep option; both belong in the arithmetic next to the deferral you’re preserving.

The RRSP rollover is the piece most families miss. An accumulated income payment you put into your own or your spouse’s RRSP, against room you already have, drops out of the base for that additional tax entirely, up to $50,000 over a lifetime (ITA s.204.94(2), component C). Same wind-up, the full charge or nothing, depending on the room. It goes through the same door as everything else here: the payment has to happen while you’re still resident in Canada.

Which column fits turns on the plan’s age, your beneficiaries’ ages, your RRSP room, and where each person sits on the US side. None of this is a read on your file. Get those on paper before anything irreversible happens.

What should I do next?

Ask the promoter, in writing, whether they’ll keep servicing the plan with a US-resident subscriber. Then make the keep-or-collapse call while every option is open, because the collapse route and the RRSP rollover both need you resident in Canada. The same move raises what happens to your RRSP and TFSA, and the account questions sit inside the full leaving-Canada tax checklist.

This guide is general information, not tax advice for your specific situation. Which points apply, and how, depends on your facts.