Which years do I have to file for an unreported offshore account?
Every year in which the account existed and was not disclosed is a separate filing with its own exposure, so the set is defined by when the account opened or when you became resident here, whichever is later. It is not defined by how far back you feel like going. In practice you fix the earliest year the obligation existed and then work forward: the income for each year, the annual disclosure of the holding for each year, and any consequential adjustments such as relief for tax withheld abroad. Scope is a decision rather than an arithmetic exercise, and it should be settled before anything is sent, because a correction covering some years and not others invites the question of why those years.
Do I file the missing years before or after applying for disclosure?
The application comes first and the filings follow it, because the relief you are asking for is only available while the CRA has not begun to act. Filing the missing years quietly and hoping no penalty is assessed leaves you with all of the work and none of the protection. The usual sequence is to settle the scope of years and the characterisation of the failure, make the disclosure, then produce the filings in the form the programme requires. That ordering also protects you if the CRA's own information arrives from the foreign bank while the work is in progress, because the date the disclosure was made is the date that decides which relief tier is open to you.
I reported the interest but never disclosed the account, what do I file?
Then the tax is right and an information return is missing, which is its own obligation with its own exposure for each year it went unfiled. The filing set here is narrower than a full catch-up: the disclosures for the affected years, and a clear account of why the income was on the return while the holding was not. That combination is worth stating plainly, because how the failure arose determines the relief available, and a taxpayer who reported the income and paid the tax stands in a materially different position from one who did neither. Assemble the returns as filed, the statements for each year, and the reason the form was missed.
Does a joint account with a parent abroad have to be reported?
A holding is reported by reference to your interest in it, not by whose name appears first on the statement, so an account held jointly with a relative abroad is generally within scope to the extent of your interest, with the income following the same split. Two things trip people up here. An account opened by a parent for convenience and funded entirely by the parent may be theirs in substance, but that is a position you must be able to evidence rather than assume. And signing authority over an account in which you hold no interest is a different question again. Establish whose money it is, in writing, before deciding what to file.
The account earned almost nothing, do I still have to file?
Yes. The annual disclosure is triggered by what you hold, not by what it earned, so a dormant account with negligible interest can still have required a form for each year it existed. That is precisely the shape of file where the exposure is large and the tax owing is nil, because the penalty attaches to the unfiled information return rather than to any underpayment of tax. It is also the shape of file where the relief routes matter most, since there is nothing to argue about on the tax and the whole question is the penalty. Do not treat a small balance, or a small amount of income, as evidence that nothing was ever due.
My bank abroad says it reports to Canada, what should I file now?
Then assume the CRA either holds the information already or shortly will, and act while acting still carries value. Automatic exchange means a disclosure is no longer the revelation of something hidden; it is a question of who speaks first, and the relief on offer closes once the CRA has begun to act. The filing set is the same as any catch-up, namely the income for each affected year, the annual disclosure of the holding for each year, and the application that frames both. What changes is that the sequence is now urgent rather than merely tidy. Request the full statement history from the bank first, because it is reliably the slowest part of the work.
Is my Indian provident fund or PPF still tax-free now that I live abroad?
The exemption is an Indian one, and it does not travel. Your new country of residence taxes worldwide income under its own rules, and several — the United States in particular — may treat the annual growth in a foreign retirement or savings plan as currently taxable and separately reportable, whether or not you withdrew anything. So an account that is genuinely tax-free in India can be a taxable, reportable asset where you now live. See Indian pensions received abroad.
Do I pay US tax on an inheritance from abroad?
A bequest is not income, so the receipt itself is not taxed. Reporting is a different matter: a US person who receives large gifts or bequests from a foreign person or estate files an information return for the year, and inheriting a foreign account or an interest in a foreign trust brings the account and asset reports with it. The penalties here attach to the information return, not to tax — which is why people who owed nothing still get letters. See Form 3520.
