You can keep ur RRSP's in Canada. When you depart, ensure you tell whatever company that is managing ur RRSP's that ur to be treated as a non-resident of canada. They wil have some paperwork to fill out, forget the form name!! When you file ur taxes with IRS, one has to fill out form 8891
http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f8891.pdf What ur basically doing is informing the IRS that u have the RRSP's, you wont have to pay any tax on them at this time, only when you take them out!! If you take them out (I'm assuming ur a non resident when doing so) 25% tax should automatically be deducted!! (ur company should do that!)
This is when it gets complicated, and best to find an accounting firm that knows how to handle this!! IRS doesnt even know how to report cashed in RRSP's lol
http://forums.serbinski.com/index.php?sid=...9e0066bcbee3f79 lots of RRSP (search form 8891) but its a forum, so info not always correct!! 1 board member actually used Serbinski to do their taxes, but was NOT happy with the results!! What one should know I belive is the BOOK value of al the RRSP's when you became a USA resident ( would not hurt to know market value as well) if you have 10 RRSP accounts, you wil need to fil lout 10 form 8891's!! There is good info onthat forum on how to properly fill it out, fairly easy to do so!!
For their Cdn taxes, one can file a section 217 and see if they can get some of that 25% deducted taxes back, if it works in ur favor, file it, if it doesnt DO NOT file it,lol (thats what revenue canada told me!!)
Cheers