What if my foreign trust has never filed a 3520-A?
The return belongs to the trust, but the consequence lands on the US owner, so a trust that has never filed is your problem rather than the trustee's. Exposure on this kind of filing is charged by reference to the form and the delay rather than to the tax, so years in which the trust distributed nothing and earned little are still years with a missing return. The first step is establishing for which years there was a US owner at all, because that is what fixes how many returns are in question.
The trustee abroad will not file, am I still exposed?
Yes. The duty to file sits with the trust and the exposure sits with you as the US owner, which is an uncomfortable combination when the trustee is in another country and sees no reason to act. It does not shift the risk back to them. What it changes is your evidence: you need to show what you asked the trustee for, what you received and what you did with it. Where the trust's records are incomplete, the position taken on the return should be set out in writing and kept with the papers supporting it.
Is my foreign pension or savings plan a trust for US purposes?
It might be, and that is the question to settle before worrying about exposure. Many ordinary arrangements abroad, including family settlements and certain retirement and education plans, are trusts for US purposes even though nobody involved has ever used the word. The answer comes from the deed and the governing rules, not from what the product is called locally or how the provider describes it. Getting this wrong in either direction is expensive: an unnecessary filing is work wasted, and a missed one accrues a delay you cannot undo later.
Does the penalty apply if the trust had no income?
It can. This is an information return about the trust's affairs, so the exposure attaches to the missing return and the delay rather than to tax owing. A trust holding one quiet asset and making no distributions still reports. The absence of income, and of any tax advantage gained from the delay, is relevant to how the delay is explained, so it should be documented. But it is an argument about the exposure, not a reason the return was not required in the first place.
Who pays the penalty, the trust or me?
The filing duty is the trust's and the exposure follows the US owner, which is why the answer is rarely the trustee. That split also decides who has to gather the information. As the person carrying the consequence, you are the one who needs the trust's income, its distributions and its list of US beneficiaries, whether or not the trustee is helpful about supplying them. Where a trust has more than one US owner, work out each person's position separately rather than assuming a single filing settles it for everybody.
How many years of foreign trust returns do I have to file?
As many as there were years with a US owner, which is a question of fact and often not the obvious answer. Ownership for these purposes can begin when a settlement is made, when someone becomes a US person, or when the terms of a trust change, and it can end as well. So the first piece of work is a timeline of who owned what and when, read from the deed and any amendments. That timeline fixes the scope of the catch-up and is the document any later question starts from.
How would a foreign tax authority know I am resident there?
Mostly from information you or your bank already provided. Account-opening forms ask you to self-certify tax residence, and that certification is reported between authorities under the Common Reporting Standard or, for US accounts, under the FATCA framework. Beyond that: employer and payroll filings, property registries, immigration records and the tax filings of anyone who paid you. The realistic planning assumption is that the data arrives. See FATCA and information reporting.
How do I report foreign income on a Canadian return?
You report foreign income in Canada by type and in Canadian dollars. Foreign employment income, interest, dividends, rent, pension and capital gains each go on the line for that kind of income, converted at the rate for the day of the transaction or an acceptable average, with the gross amount reported and the foreign tax withheld claimed as a credit rather than netted off. Holding foreign property above the cost threshold adds the foreign income verification statement, which is a separate filing. See the T1135.
