How do I split my income between Canada and the US?
By where you were working, day by day, and not by where your employer or your dispatcher sits. Employment income is sourced to the country in which the work is performed, and for a driver that is a moving answer. There is no article for road transport that mirrors the one written for ships and aircraft, so nothing simplifies the split for you. What makes it workable is the record: logs, dispatch sheets, fuel purchases and border crossings together show where each working day was spent. The return is built from that schedule. Where a day is genuinely split across the border, the treatment follows the rule the two countries apply to part-days, and that is settled before the schedule is built.
Do I owe tax in a US state I only drove through?
Possibly, and the notice you received is not proof either way. A state's power to tax wages generally turns on work performed within its borders, and states differ sharply on whether pass-through miles count, what filing floor applies, and how a resident of another country is treated. A notice is usually generated by data, such as a licence, an employer filing or a fuel tax return, rather than by anyone looking at your route. The answer is to establish from your own records what you actually did in that state that year, and reply with it. Ignoring the notice converts a question about miles into an assessment built on the state's assumptions.
Can I claim meals and lodging as a long-haul driver?
Usually yes in some form, and the reason the claim is questioned every year is almost always evidence rather than entitlement. Both countries allow relief for meals and accommodation incurred while away from the place you normally report to, and both attach conditions about the length of the trip, the distance travelled and who bore the cost. The claim survives when three things agree: the log showing where you were, the employer's certification of what it did and did not reimburse, and the records supporting the method you chose. Where they disagree, the claim is reduced to what can be proved. Choose the method at the start of the year, not at the end.
Is it a problem that my employer withholds in one country only?
It is a mismatch to manage rather than an error in itself. An employer withholds where it is registered and where the law obliges it, which for a carrier is often only its home country. That does not change where the income is sourced, so you can be liable in the other country on days worked there with nothing withheld against that liability. The practical consequences are instalments or a balance due on the foreign return, and a relief claim at home for whatever the other country finally takes. Ask the employer in writing what it reports and to whom, because your two returns have to agree with the payroll filings already made.
Which records do I actually need to keep as a driver?
The ones that show where you were on each working day, kept as you go. In practice that means the electronic or daily logs, the dispatch and trip sheets, border crossing evidence, fuel purchases by jurisdiction, and anything the employer issues confirming pay and reimbursement. Those sources are cross-checked against each other, which is the point: a schedule that reconciles to independent records is what makes a sourcing split defensible. A year reconstructed from memory or from a bank statement produces a figure nobody can verify, and an unverifiable split becomes the reviewer's split rather than yours. Keep the same categories every year so one year can be compared with the next.
Am I still a resident of Canada if I drive all year?
Residence follows your ties, not your mileage. Time out of the country matters, but a home kept available, a spouse and children, a driving licence, health coverage and where your pay is banked all weigh, and for a driver those ties usually stay put while the truck does not. Most long-haul drivers therefore remain resident where the household is and are taxed there on worldwide income, with relief for foreign tax. The exception is the driver who genuinely relocates the household across the border. That is a change of residence with its own consequences, decided on the facts of the move rather than on hours behind the wheel.
What is double taxation?
Double taxation means the same income being taxed by two authorities. It comes in two forms: juridical, where two countries each tax one person on one amount, and economic, where two different people are taxed on the same underlying profit — a company on its earnings and a shareholder on the dividend paid out of them. Relief comes from a treaty, a foreign tax credit, or an exemption, and which one applies depends on the income type. How to avoid double taxation sets out the routes.
Is "fund transfer pricing" the same thing as transfer pricing?
No — and if you came here to calculate FTP, this is not it. Fund transfer pricing is a bank's internal allocation of funding costs and benefits between its own business units, a treasury and asset-liability management discipline used to measure branch or product profitability. Tax transfer pricing is about prices between legally separate related parties across borders, and about which country taxes the resulting profit. The words overlap; the fields do not. See our transfer pricing work.
