How is my start-up visa investment taxed once I move?
The visa programme does not decide that. Three other things do: where the investment physically sits, whether you hold it personally or through an entity, and the date your residency begins. Together they determine what the destination country can reach and when. A holding that produces no income until a sale may be quiet for years, while the same capital inside an entity can generate annual reporting from the first filing year. Because all three are usually settled in the immigration paperwork before anybody asks a tax question, the useful moment to examine them is while the structure can still be changed.
Should I hold my investment personally or through a company?
It depends on where the investment sits relative to where you will be resident, and on what the destination does with entities owned by its residents. A company can be the sensible answer where it matches the commercial arrangement and the destination treats it straightforwardly. It can also pull in look-through treatment, annual reporting, and a second layer of tax on getting money back out. Neither answer is right in general. What is always right is deciding before residency begins, because moving an investment between personal and corporate hands afterwards is itself a transaction in the new system.
Does my investment have to be made before I become a resident?
The programme's own timetable decides when the money has to move. The tax question is separate, and it is often answered by accident. If the investment is made and the structure fixed before residency begins, the arrangement is already in place when you arrive and what you hold enters the new system at its value on that day. If it is made afterwards, each step is an event inside the destination's rules. Aligning the two timetables, the programme's and the residency start date, is the planning, and it is cheaper than discovering later that they were never coordinated.
Will the structure my immigration lawyer set up work for tax?
Sometimes, but it will not have been designed for it. Immigration counsel builds a structure that satisfies the programme: the right capital in the right vehicle with the right business plan, on the programme's timetable. Nothing in that brief asks what the vehicle costs to own once you are a resident of the destination, how distributions from it will be treated, or whether it creates annual reporting. The two objectives are usually compatible. Where they are not, the discrepancy is far cheaper to find while the documents are still drafts than in the first filing year after arrival.
Is capital I transfer in as investment money taxable?
Moving your own capital is not, in itself, income. The tax questions attach to what the capital earns and to the vehicle holding it, not to the transfer. That said, a transfer can attract attention it was not expecting: institutions ask about source of funds, and the destination may want to see how the money arose, particularly where it came out of a business or a disposal in the country you left. So documenting where the capital originates matters as much as the structure it lands in. Assemble that record while it is still to hand.
What if my visa application is refused after I have invested?
The capital and the structure survive the refusal, and so do their tax consequences, which is why the question belongs in the plan rather than in the aftermath. If residency never begins, the holding is owned by a non-resident of the destination and is taxed on that footing, which may mean source-based obligations where the investment sits and continuing obligations where you actually live. If the application is reattempted later, the structure built for the first attempt is already fixed and may not suit the second. Build the wait, and the possibility of refusal, into the structure at the outset.
I have not filed for several years while living abroad — what are my options?
Both countries have routes back, and using one before they contact you is what preserves the relief. On the US side there are procedures aimed at taxpayers whose failure was not wilful, including one designed for people living outside the country, and separate procedures for late account reports and information returns alone. Canada has its voluntary disclosures programme and taxpayer relief for penalties and interest. Filing quietly and hoping is the one approach with no protection attached to it. See catch-up filing.
How do you avoid double taxation?
You claim relief once, in the right country, in the right order. Usually the source country taxes first, the residence country then gives a credit for that tax against its own charge on the same income, and a treaty caps the source-country rate. Getting the order wrong is what produces a double charge you then have to unwind. The mechanism differs by income type, which is why we map the whole position before filing either return. See how to avoid double taxation.
