Updated August 6, 2026. Quick answer: no US law requires your broker to close your account when you move abroad. Firms that restrict foreign-address accounts do so as a business decision about foreign regulatory exposure, which means the answer is firm by firm — and it means the useful move is to ask your own provider in writing before you go, not to read a general rule that does not exist.
Why this happens, and why nobody can tell you the general answer
The restriction is not a tax rule and not a securities rule that names you. When a US firm services a customer resident in another country, that country’s own regulators may treat the firm as doing business there, which brings registration, disclosure and suitability obligations the firm never signed up for. Some firms accept that cost for some countries. Others decline it, and the customer’s account is restricted, converted, or closed.
So the outcome depends on your firm and your country, and it can change when either changes its mind. We are not going to name firms or publish a table of who does what, because that information goes stale faster than we could keep it true, and a reader who relies on a stale row makes an irreversible move on it. What we can say is what to ask and when.
Restriction, when it comes, is usually narrower than closure: commonly an account that can be held and sold but not added to, with new purchases of some fund types blocked. That distinction matters, because a forced liquidation in a taxable account is a taxable event you did not choose the timing of.
What to do before the address changes
- Ask in writing, naming the country. The answer differs by country, so a general question gets a general answer. Keep the reply.
- Ask what happens to each account type separately — taxable brokerage, IRA, 401(k) left with a former employer. They are frequently treated differently, and retirement accounts are often the more accommodating case.
- Ask specifically whether you can still buy, or only hold and sell. That is the difference between an inconvenience and a plan that stops working.
- Do not change the address first and find out afterwards. This is the single most consequential piece of sequencing on this page: an address change can trigger the review, and it is far easier to plan a move between firms while you are still a domestic customer in good standing.
If your provider will not keep you, the practical options are to move to a firm that serves your country, to maintain a genuine US address if you legitimately have one, or to hold the assets somewhere local. A US address you do not actually use is a misrepresentation to your broker, and it interacts badly with the state domicile question — a mailing address you are asserting for one purpose is evidence a state can use for another. Why that matters more than it sounds.
The reporting that starts once accounts are foreign
Opening local accounts starts obligations that have nothing to do with owing tax. There are two separate regimes, with different thresholds, different definitions and different destinations — and satisfying one does not satisfy the other. The full comparison is its own page; the parts that specifically change when you live abroad are these.
The FBAR does not get easier. Under 31 C.F.R. §1010.350(a), “[e]ach United States person having a financial interest in, or signature or other authority over, a bank, securities, or other financial account in a foreign country shall report such relationship”, with an aggregate threshold of $10,000. Living abroad does not raise it. It goes to FinCEN, not with your tax return.
Form 8938 does get easier, substantially. The base threshold under IRC §6038D is $50,000, but for taxpayers whose tax home is abroad and who meet the presence test — bona fide residence for the full year, or 330 days of physical presence in a twelve-month period — the thresholds rise to more than $200,000 on the last day of the year or $300,000 at any point for an unmarried filer, and $400,000 or $600,000 filing jointly.
The trap in the pair is the gap between them: it is entirely normal to be under the Form 8938 threshold and well over the FBAR threshold, which is how people who believe they have no foreign reporting obligation acquire one.
Sources
31 C.F.R. §1010.350(a) and IRC §6038D at the Legal Information Institute; the living-abroad thresholds from the IRS Instructions for Form 8938. All read 2026-08-06.
Honest gaps. Which brokers restrict which countries is a business fact we cannot verify at a primary source and deliberately do not publish. We also do not state an FBAR filing deadline here: the regulation text still carries a date that later legislation changed, and rather than print either version we point you at the FinCEN filing page for the current one.
See methodology and corrections. General information about published law, not tax or legal advice. No affiliate links, nothing sold.