It depends on many factors. Are you a dual citizen and if so what is yourother citizenship Did you bother to get a social security number US passportetc Do you have promising job prospects in the US Is your spouse American ifyou have a spouse or are you planning to marry an American Do you ownproperty in the USYou can do one of three things 1. Catch up on filing and continue to stay in compliance 2. Renounce your US citizenship formally and permanently. This may require resolving past obligations but will absolve you from all future ones 3. Continue to ignore the requirements yes this is possibly a valid optionThe US has the most complex punitive and far reaching tax laws in the freeworld and holding a US passport is highly overrated. If you hold Canadiancitizenship already the best options are 2 or 3 especially if you couldpossibly leave a sizeable estate to your loved ones on your passing or yourprimarily Canadian held assets are subject to capital gains taxes. Canada hasno estate taxes and a simpler and often more favourable capital gains taxsituationu2026and traveling with a Canadian passport will probably even be lesshassle than with an American one. You also dont want to be an American if youhave any sizeable lottery or gambling winnings because those are tax exemptin Canada as well.Fortunately your Canadian income tax is deductible and because personal incometaxes are higher in Canada in all likelihood you will fall below the basicexemption in the US and will owe little to no taxesu2026assuming you are Canadian.Plus if you are assessed showing no taxes owed you will likely be absolved ofall penalties. However catching up on many years of returns and all the otherpaperwork will require legal assistance at a cist of between 1000 and 10000for most people regardless of amount of tax owing.There are a large number of Americans who were not even fully aware they wereAmerican by virtue of being born to Canadian parents in American territoryusually a hospital on the US side of a border community. Even if they arefully lifelong Canadian citizens just because they breathed their first breathin the US and that is the extent of their attachment to the US they aretechnically saddled with the burden of filing US tax returns and reporting allof their bank accounts to the US government. Because the US government haslimited reach in Canada and has gradually imposed more and more taxrequirements over time by far most of these u201caccidental Americansu201d arent evenaware of their obligations much less in compliance.The truth is the vast majority of such u201cAmericansu201d in Canada and most othernations purposely avoid looking into their obligations not u201cwillfullyu201d toavoid taxes because they likely owe none but out of fear of drawingattention to themselves and suddenly becoming subject to all the legal hasslesand expenses ie. Avoiding paying lawyers and accountants not avoiding theIRS. By taking the u201ccolonel Klinku201d approach I know nnnothIIING They avoidcreating a US paper trail and thus are out of reach of government eyes. Theinfomal advice I have heard is that if your ONLY record of US citizenship is abirth certificate and all you ever plan to do in the US is go on vacationthen pick option 3. You are out of reach of the IRS and you are best to leavethat Pandoras box closed.The next best choice is 2 as described above. Renounce US citizenship if youplan to have some tangential ties to the US vacation propertytimeshareconduct business there take out a TN1 for temporary work live in Florida orHawaii every winter etc but you plan to live your life almost exclusivelywhere you do now. That way you will tie up all loose ends so that the US papertrail you create wont raise any red flags and you get to avoid some of themore nasty obligations in the futureFinally and only if you are seriously considering becoming very involved inthe US permanently moving there for work or upon retirement establishing abusiness with its primary headquarters in the US marrying an American etcThose are situations that are a LOT less trouble to deal with as a US citizencompared to the relatively minor hassle of filing US returns once you arecaught up.