Do I pay tax on money gifted from my parents overseas?
No. Canada does not tax gifts received, whether they come from within the country or from abroad, and there is no line on your return for the amount. What is taxed is what the gift then does: interest on the money while it sits in an account, dividends if it buys shares, rent if it buys property, and the gain when any of those is eventually sold. Your cost for that later calculation is the value of what you received at the time you received it. So the receipt is not taxable and the consequences are, which is why documenting the gift matters more than the return for that year.
What proof do I need that a transfer was a gift?
Something written, dated at the time, and from the person who gave it. A short letter from the donor stating the amount, the date, that it is a gift, and that no repayment is expected does most of the work. Keep it with the bank records showing the funds leaving the donor's account and arriving in yours, because the trail matters as much as the letter and a gift routed through a third party is the version that causes difficulty. If the gift is property rather than cash, keep the transfer document and evidence of value on the date it changed hands.
Is a gift from abroad reported anywhere on my tax return?
The gift itself has no place on the return, because it is not income. What can appear is what you now hold as a result of it. Funds left in an account outside Canada, foreign shares, or property abroad count towards your foreign-property reporting once your foreign holdings pass the threshold, and that schedule is prepared on cost, which for gifted property is the value when you received it. Income the gift produces is reported in the ordinary way from the date it becomes yours. None of this changes if the gift stays abroad, which surprises people.
My parents gifted a deposit for a condo — what do I file yearly?
If the property is in Canada and you live in it, ordinarily nothing recurring arises from the gift itself and the deposit is simply part of what you paid. The records to keep are the donor's letter and the bank trail, because the question that comes back years later is the origin of the money rather than what you did with it. If the property is let, the rent is yours to report. If the property is abroad, add the foreign-property reporting. Keep the gift documentation with the property file rather than the tax papers, since it is the eventual sale that will call for it.
What if the gift stays in a foreign account in my name?
Then you own a foreign account, and that has consequences the gift did not. The interest it earns is your income on your Canadian return from the day the account is yours, with credit for any tax withheld where it sits. The balance counts towards your foreign-property reporting, prepared on the amount you received rather than today's value. And the account is not invisible: institutions abroad report accounts held by Canadian residents under exchange-of-information arrangements. Leaving the money where it is changes nothing except which forms are involved.
Can a family gift be treated as unreported income?
It can, and that is the real risk in this subject rather than tax on the gift. An unexplained deposit looks much the same as undeclared earnings, and the burden of explaining it falls on you at the point it is questioned, often years later, when the donor's bank has purged its records or the donor is no longer able to confirm anything. Contemporaneous documents are what prevent the argument: a dated letter from the donor, the outbound and inbound bank records, and a note on your own file. Documenting a gift when it arrives takes an afternoon. Reconstructing one is a different exercise altogether.
How are non-residents taxed on Canadian rental income?
By default the payer or agent withholds a flat rate on the gross rent and remits it, with no deduction for mortgage interest, taxes or repairs. Electing under section 216 lets you file on the net rental result instead, which for most properties recovers a substantial part of what was withheld; an NR6 undertaking filed before the year starts lets the withholding itself be computed on net rather than gross. See the section 216 return.
What happens when a non-resident sells Canadian property?
The buyer or their solicitor is obliged to withhold on the purchase price unless you obtain a clearance certificate, so the practical work happens before closing rather than after. The certificate application reports the disposition and the gain and fixes the amount the authority requires to be held. Apply late and the withholding is computed on the gross price, tying up cash until a return recovers it. See the section 116 clearance certificate.
