How to Officially Cancel Your Green Card: Form I-407 and Exit Tax

To cancel your green card, file Form I-407 (Record of Abandonment of Lawful Permanent Resident Status) with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, mail in your physical card with it, and then settle your final U.S. tax obligations. The paperwork itself is short. The consequences that follow, especially the tax ones, are what deserve your attention before you send anything in.

Complete Form I-407

Download the current edition of Form I-407 directly from the USCIS website. Outdated versions get rejected.¹

Part 1 asks for your Alien Registration Number (the A-Number on your green card), your USCIS Online Account Number if you have one, your full legal name as printed on the card, your date and country of birth, and a mailing address outside the United States. You’ll also indicate your reason for abandoning status.²

If the person giving up the card is under 14 or is an incapacitated adult, a parent or legal guardian signs on their behalf.¹

What to Include in the Envelope

Send your physical green card (Form I-551) along with the form. If USCIS also issued you a reentry permit or a refugee travel document, include those. Do not send your Social Security card, driver’s license, or anything else that didn’t come from USCIS.¹

If your card was lost, stolen, or has expired, you can still file. Check the appropriate box explaining why the card isn’t enclosed. If you don’t have the card at all, the instructions let you write “N/A” for the field asking for the name printed on it.³ You do not need to renew an expired card before filing.

Where to File

Mail the form and surrendered documents to the USCIS facility in Lee’s Summit, Missouri. The same address works for USPS, FedEx, UPS, and DHL:

USCIS
Attn: I-407
7 Product Way
Lee’s Summit, MO 64002¹

Use a trackable shipping method and keep copies of everything, including proof of mailing. Check the USCIS fee schedule before you send, because fees change.

In-person filing is possible in limited situations: at a U.S. embassy or consulate, a USCIS international field office, or with a Customs and Border Protection officer at a port of entry. This route is generally reserved for people who need immediate proof of abandonment, for instance to apply for a visa on short notice. If you hand your card to CBP at the border, the officer isn’t required to admit you afterward. A one-time visitor admission is common in practice but discretionary.

After USCIS Processes the Form

USCIS sends a confirmation letter acknowledging receipt. An incomplete or unsigned form comes back unprocessed, so review everything carefully before mailing. Processing times vary with workload.

Once abandonment is processed, you are no longer a lawful permanent resident. You lose the right to live and work in the United States, and the decision is generally treated as irrevocable.¹ USCIS reports your name and filing date to the IRS under Internal Revenue Code section 6039G,⁴ which sets up the tax steps that come next.

Your Final U.S. Tax Return

Filing I-407 does not automatically end your U.S. tax obligations. You must file a U.S. return for the year you abandon your status. Two options:

A dual-status return that splits the year into a resident portion (worldwide income up to the date you filed I-407) and a nonresident portion (only U.S.-source income after that).
A full-year resident return reporting worldwide income for the whole year. This can be the better choice if you’re married and want to file jointly, since joint filing gives you a higher standard deduction and access to certain credits.

Form 8854 and the Exit Tax

If you held your green card during at least 8 of the last 15 taxable years, the IRS treats you as a “long-term resident,” and the expatriation tax rules apply to you the same way they apply to a U.S. citizen who renounces citizenship.⁵ You must file Form 8854, the Initial and Annual Expatriation Statement, attached to your return for the year of your expatriation date.⁶

Form 8854 determines whether you’re a “covered expatriate.” You are covered if any one of the following is true:

Your net worth is $2 million or more on the date of expatriation.
Your average annual net income tax for the five years before expatriation exceeds the inflation-adjusted threshold ($206,000 for 2025).⁷
You cannot certify full compliance with all U.S. tax obligations for the five years before expatriation.

Skipping Form 8854 can cause the IRS to treat you as a covered expatriate automatically, so file it even if you’re confident you fall below the thresholds.

For a covered expatriate, the exit tax treats all worldwide assets as if sold the day before the expatriation date. Net gain above the exclusion amount ($890,000 for 2025) is taxed as income.⁷ Both the tax liability threshold and the exclusion adjust annually for inflation, so confirm the current figures before you file. Someone with substantial unrealized gains in investments, real estate, or business interests can end up with a real tax bill on assets they never sold.

If you held your green card for fewer than 8 of the last 15 tax years, the exit tax rules don’t reach you and Form 8854 isn’t required. You still owe a final tax return for the year of abandonment.

Social Security and Medicare

Social Security retirement benefits can survive the loss of your green card. If you earned enough credits while working in the U.S. (generally 40, or about ten years of work), you may still qualify. The Social Security Administration has totalization agreements with about 30 countries that let you combine U.S. and foreign credits.⁸ Whether SSA can actually pay you depends on your citizenship and where you live, because payments to certain countries are restricted.

Medicare works differently. Eligibility generally requires that you be a lawful permanent resident or U.S. citizen. Once your green card is canceled, you no longer meet that requirement and lose access to Medicare coverage, even if you paid Medicare taxes for decades. If you’re near 65 and have been contributing, weigh this loss before filing.

Coming Back to the U.S. as a Visitor

After cancellation, any future trip requires either a nonimmigrant visa (tourist, work, student, and so on) or entry through the Visa Waiver Program if your country of citizenship participates. Former LPRs from VWP countries can apply for ESTA, but approval isn’t guaranteed, and some are directed to apply for a standard B-1/B-2 visitor visa instead.

Abandoning your green card does not permanently bar you from immigrating again. You can re-apply through the normal process, but you start from scratch, with no credit for the years you already held LPR status. Given the current backlogs across most visa categories, treat the decision as genuinely permanent even though it is theoretically reversible.¹

1
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. I-407, Record of Abandonment of Lawful Permanent Resident Status
2
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. USCIS Form I-407 – Record of Abandonment of Lawful Permanent Resident Status
3
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Instructions for Record of Abandonment of Lawful Permanent Resident Status (Form I-407)
4
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 6039G – Information on Individuals Losing United States Citizenship
5
Internal Revenue Service. Expatriation Tax
6
Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 8854
7
Internal Revenue Service. Revenue Procedure 2024-40
8
Social Security Administration. U.S. International Social Security Agreements