Like the UK and many other commonwealth countries, Canada taxes citizens and residents based on residence. If you leave Canada and "break all ties", you don't have to file or pay income taxes to Canada. The US has a far more restrictive system insofar as if you are an American citizen or deemed to be a "resident for tax purposes" you must file and pay income taxes. It's an onerous system and means that Americans must continue to file and pay for their entire lives. US "residents for tax purposes" must continue to file and pay until they are no longer considered to be this status. Any non-US person can earn this status by being present on the US over a specific amount of time during 1-3 years. The USA has a little known credit for foreign earned income called the "Foreign Earned Income Tax Credit" that allows you to claim about 80K USD US uax exempt but you're supposed to have paid tax on this money to the tax jurisdiction you earned it in. The laws on this are mirky and no 2 tax attorneys will interpret the IRS tax code the same. I think the IRS wants to keep it a bit confusing. Some do not pay any taxes on that money while others pay the lower of the 2 tax rates...Anyway, this case seems to require that the US have a tax treaty with the country in question. Neither Canada not the USA have a tax treaty in place with Argentina. This means that US citizens would have to file for monies earned here and pay taxes in both jurisdictions (double taxation - no representation...haha, bad joke). The Argentine system seems to have been rewritten to say that after 180 days anyone is considered to be a tax resident and must pay Argentine taxes on worldwide income. However, like most things here, the tax code was so badly written than it can be interpreted 1000 ways from Sunday. If you are never legally considered a resident (ie. you can claim to be a perma-tourist), realistically you will never have to pay.
