New Zealand and the United States
Do I still have to file a US tax return from New Zealand?
Yes. The United States taxes its citizens and resident aliens on worldwide income wherever they live, so moving to New Zealand does not end the obligation to file. It moves the deadline instead, automatically to 15 June with a further extension to 15 October on request. There are usually two other filings people miss entirely, because they are separate from the tax return and triggered by balances rather than income: the FBAR once your foreign accounts together pass $10,000, and Form 8938 at much higher thresholds.
Yes, and leaving does not change it
The United States is one of very few countries that taxes on citizenship rather than residence. The Internal Revenue Service states the position in a sentence: "You are subject to tax on worldwide income from all sources and must report all taxable income and pay taxes according to the Internal Revenue Code."
Worldwide means worldwide. Your New Zealand salary, your New Zealand interest, your New Zealand rental income. Wherever you live, however long you have lived there, and whether or not you have any intention of going back.
This applies to United States citizens and to resident aliens, which includes green card holders. It does not apply to a New Zealander who once worked in the United States and left, unless they are still a resident alien for tax purposes.
What moves is the deadline
Being abroad buys you two months without asking.
Filing your return
The IRS grants "an automatic 2-month extension to file your return without requesting an extension", which takes a calendar-year filer from 15 April to 15 June. If that is still not enough, Form 4868 filed before the June date takes you to 15 October.
One thing to be clear about, because it is where people get caught. The extensions move the filing date, not the paying date. The IRS is explicit that "you will have to pay interest on any tax not paid by the regular due date". Interest runs from April whichever date you end up filing on.
Filing is not the same as paying
Most people who file from New Zealand end up owing the United States nothing, and still have to file to establish that.
Two mechanisms do the work, and they cover different things.
The foreign earned income exclusion takes wages and self-employment income earned abroad out of your US taxable income. For 2026 "the maximum exclusion is $132,900 per person", and for 2025 it was $130,000. You qualify either by being "a bona fide resident of a foreign country or countries for an uninterrupted period that includes an entire tax year", or by being "physically present in a foreign country or countries for at least 330 full days during any period of 12 consecutive months".
Read the name of it carefully, though, because this is the trap for anyone actually retired. It is the foreign earned income exclusion. It is for money you worked for. It does nothing for a pension, a withdrawal from a retirement account, interest, dividends, or rent.
The foreign tax credit is the one that matters for most retirement income. If you "paid or accrued foreign taxes to a foreign country or U.S. possession and are subject to U.S. tax on the same income", you can take either a credit or a deduction for them, and the IRS notes that "in most cases, it is to your advantage to take foreign income taxes as a tax credit". It is claimed on Form 1116.
New Zealand tax rates are not low, so New Zealand tax paid often absorbs the US liability on the same income. Often, not always, and not on income New Zealand does not tax.
There is also a tax treaty. The IRS lists an income tax treaty with New Zealand from 1982, a protocol from 2008, and a technical explanation of that protocol. What the treaty does to any particular kind of income is its own question and is not answered here.
The two filings people do not know exist
These are the ones that turn up in people's lives as a shock, because neither is triggered by income and neither arrives with your tax return.
The FBAR. A US person "must file an FBAR to report" their foreign financial accounts "if the aggregate value of those foreign financial accounts exceeded $10,000 at any time during the calendar year reported". Aggregate, across all accounts. At any time, not at year end. And the IRS's definition is broad: "Generally, an account at a financial institution located outside the United States is a foreign financial account."
Ten thousand US dollars across every New Zealand account you hold is not a lot. A term deposit and a current account will do it. So will a KiwiSaver balance, on the usual reading, though whether the United States treats KiwiSaver as an account or as something else is a question the IRS has never squarely answered.
The FBAR is "an annual report, due April 15 following the calendar year reported", with an automatic extension to 15 October if you miss it. It is filed with the Treasury rather than with your tax return.
Form 8938. The FATCA report, and this one does travel with the return. The thresholds for someone living abroad are much higher: unmarried, "more than $200,000 on the last day of the tax year or more than $300,000 at any time during the year"; married filing jointly, "more than $400,000 on the last day of the tax year or more than $600,000 at any time during the year".
Meeting one of these three obligations does not excuse the others. They have different thresholds, different forms, and in the FBAR's case a different agency.
What this guide does not tell you
It does not tell you what you will owe, which depends on your income, your New Zealand tax, and the treaty.
It does not tell you how New Zealand taxes you, which runs on residence rather than citizenship and has its own rules for money arriving from overseas.
It does not deal with what happens when a US person holds a foreign investment fund, which is where the sharpest and least settled questions live, on both sides.
And it does not cover people who have fallen behind. There are IRS programmes for taxpayers abroad who did not know they had to file, and those are worth taking to someone who does this work rather than to a calculator.