A Green Card Is a Tax Status: The Real Price of the Gold Card

The Gold Card is priced at USD 1 million, and the price is the part a family can see. A green card makes its holder a US tax resident, taxed on worldwide income wherever the family actually lives. Hold it in eight of fifteen tax years and leaving brings the expatriation rules into play. The card’s price is printed on a government website. Its cost is printed in the Internal Revenue Code.

The market has read the code before the marketing has. In April 2026, four months after applications opened, the Commerce Secretary reported a single approval, and the advisers quoted in the press say wealthy clients are waiting. The firms that earn this business will open with tax residence and exit planning, and will be the ones willing to tell a family “not yet.”

What the card actually costs a family

Executive Order 14351, signed on September 19, 2025, set the gift at USD 1 million for an individual and USD 2 million when a corporation gives on someone’s behalf. The money is an “unrestricted gift” to the Department of Commerce, deposited in a separate Treasury fund (Federal Register, 90 FR 46031). Applications opened on December 10, 2025 (ABC News). The petition, Form I-140G, can only be filed through a USCIS online account, and only after a registration on trumpcard.gov has been accepted (USCIS).

The detail that changes the arithmetic sits in the form instructions. The USD 15,000 fee is charged per person and “will not be refunded regardless of the action taken on your petition.” The gift is per person too: USD 1 million for the principal, and USD 1 million for each spouse and child who requests a card (USCIS, Form I-140G instructions, edition 11/19/25). A couple with two children is looking at USD 4 million in gifts and USD 60,000 in fees. Under the ordinary employment-based rules, a spouse and children accompanying the principal are entitled to the same status (8 U.S.C. 1153(d)). The Gold Card prices each of them separately.

It is also not a new visa. The instructions route every petition into one of two existing categories, EB-1 extraordinary ability or EB-2 with a national interest waiver, and warn that the wait “may differ” between them and should be checked against the State Department’s Visa Bulletin. After approval, the family still completes consular processing abroad. The executive order and the instructions both describe the gift as unrestricted, and neither says anything about giving it back.

Permanent residence is a tax election

The IRS test takes one sentence: “You are a resident, for U.S. federal tax purposes, if you are a lawful permanent resident of the United States at any time during the calendar year” (IRS, green card test). Residents are taxed “in the same manner as U.S. citizens on their worldwide income” (IRS, Introduction to residency under U.S. tax law). A family that buys the card as insurance and keeps living abroad has still become a US taxpayer on everything it earns.

Under the green card test it continues until the holder abandons it in writing to USCIS, or USCIS or a federal court terminates it (IRS). Reporting follows the residence: a US person whose foreign accounts exceed USD 10,000 in aggregate at any time in the year files an FBAR (IRS).

The status does not fade when it goes unused. The tax residence ends on paper, or not at all.

There is one lever, and it is timing. For a card received abroad, the residency starting date is “your first day of physical presence in the United States after you receive your green card” (IRS, Residency starting and ending dates). Gold Card families complete consular processing outside the country, so in practice they choose the day the tax clock starts. The review of trusts, of unrealized gains, of which relatives actually need a card, all of it has to happen before that flight. Nothing in this dossier is legal, tax or investment advice for a particular family. It is the reason a family needs that advice before the flight instead of after it.

The eighth year is the exit problem

Leaving is where the price compounds. A long-term resident is anyone who was a lawful permanent resident “in at least 8 of the last 15 tax years” ending with the year the status ends (IRS, Instructions for Form 8854). A year counts if the holder was a permanent resident “during any portion of that year” (IRS, Notice 97-19), so the count runs in tax years, not anniversaries. A card first used in late December and surrendered in early January can touch eight tax years in a little over six years. One relief is written in: a year in which the holder was treated as a resident of a treaty country, without waiving the treaty benefits, does not count toward the eight.

A long-term resident who leaves becomes a covered expatriate if any one of three tests is met: average annual net income tax above USD 206,000 over the prior five years (the 2025 threshold), a net worth of USD 2 million or more, or a failure to certify five years of full compliance on Form 8854 (IRS). A family able to give away USD 1 million per person will very rarely sit under the net worth line.

Covered status triggers the mark-to-market regime: all property is treated as sold at fair market value on the day before expatriation, and gain above the exclusion, USD 890,000 for 2025, is taxed (IRS, Expatriation tax). The consequences reach the next generation. Gifts or bequests from a covered expatriate to a US citizen or resident may be subject to the section 2801 tax, which matters to any family whose children stay (IRS, Instructions for Form 8854). Failing to file Form 8854 when required can bring a USD 10,000 penalty (IRS).

Gift or investment: the comparison clients deserve

EB-5 still exists, and on paper it costs less. The minimum is USD 800,000 in a targeted employment area or USD 1,050,000 elsewhere (USCIS). The capital is invested, not given: the statute expects it to remain invested for at least two years and to create full-time employment for at least ten qualifying workers (8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(A)). It can be lost. It can also come back. The Gold Card gift cannot come back under any published term.

Both routes end in the same tax status, a point one adviser put plainly to CNBC. International businesspeople, said David Lesperance, “can already access the U.S. through nonimmigrant visas that do not automatically expose their global wealth to U.S. tax.” And “those who are willing to become taxpayers can already gain green card status through the EB-5 program, which requires an investment rather than the donation.”

An honest adviser says the last row first. The Gold Card is a more expensive way to become a US taxpayer, and its one advertised advantage, speed, is contradicted by the government’s own court filing.

The calendar risks nobody prints

Start with uptake. Testifying to a House subcommittee on April 23, 2026, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said: “They have approved, recently, one person, and there are hundreds in the queue” (CBS News). In December he had predicted 80,000 cards and more than USD 100 billion in revenue (CNBC).

Then the court record. In a filing reported by CNBC in May 2026, the Department of Homeland Security said 338 people had submitted Gold Card requests and 165 had paid the fee, and added: “Gold Card applicants will not necessarily have their petitions adjudicated faster than any non-Gold-Card applicant.” The trumpcard.gov site had promised residency “in record time” (ABC News). The filing answers a suit brought on February 3, 2026 by the American Association of University Professors and immigrant professionals, which argues the program converts employment-based visa categories into “a payment-based fast lane” (Public Citizen). CNBC reports that investment-visa attorneys say their wealthy clients will not risk USD 1 million until the program is tested in court or approved by Congress.

EB-5 carries dates of its own, and they are closer:

• Regional center visas are authorized through September 30, 2027 (8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(E); USCIS).
• Only regional center petitions filed on or before September 30, 2026 must keep being processed if the program lapses (8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(S)). Anything filed later has no such protection.
• The USD 800,000 and USD 1,050,000 minimums adjust for inflation for petitions filed on or after January 1, 2027 (USCIS).

A family weighing the two routes this autumn is choosing between a program under litigation and a program approaching a sunset with a price change inside the same window. Neither risk appears on a sales page.