What do I actually file in the year I leave Canada?
A part-year return for the year of departure, showing the date you ceased to be resident and reporting the deemed disposition that the date triggers. Around it sit the schedules that support the figures: what was inside the deemed disposition, what it cost, and what it was worth on the departure day. If the tax is to be deferred, the election goes in with the return rather than afterwards. The order matters. The position on residency and on which assets are caught is settled first, and the filing set is then assembled to match it.
Do I have to list everything I own on the departure return?
No. The return reports the property that falls inside the deemed disposition, and that is not the same as everything you own. Some assets keep their Canadian tax hooks instead and stay taxable here on an actual sale later, which means they are dealt with under the non-resident rules in the year they are sold rather than in the departure return. Working out which side each asset falls on is the substance of the job, and it is what makes two departure returns with similar asset lists look nothing alike.
How can I defer the departure tax if nothing was sold?
An election filed with the departure return can defer the tax against security acceptable to the revenue authority, so the charge does not have to be funded in a year when no sale happened. It is a deferral rather than a forgiveness: the amount stays attached to the property and falls due on an actual disposition. What usually decides whether this is workable is the security itself, meaning what you are able to post and whether posting it suits you better than selling something to raise the tax.
Can I use my losses against the departure tax?
Losses can be realised against the deemed gains, but whether they are usable in the same return depends on how the deemed disposition is composed and on what was disposed of when. This is why the asset split is settled before the filing rather than after it: once the year has closed, the room to arrange a loss against a gain has closed with it. Where the loss is already there, the return has to show both sides clearly enough that the set-off is not queried on assessment.
What happens to my Canadian rental property when I emigrate?
Property that keeps its Canadian tax hooks is generally outside the deemed disposition, because Canada does not need to tax it on the way out: it remains within reach when it is actually sold. So it is not reported as a deemed sale in the departure return, and instead falls under the non-resident regime from the departure date onward. Two filing streams therefore start on the same date, and getting the split wrong in the departure return tends to surface years later, when the property is finally sold.
What if I left years ago and never reported my departure?
It is filed late rather than not at all. The first task is the date: establishing when residency actually ceased, from the documents of the time rather than from what is remembered now. The deemed disposition is then computed on that day's values, which is harder retrospectively but rarely impossible for anything with a market price. The return is filed on that basis and the intervening years are brought into line with it. What the work produces is a settled departure date and a filing history that no longer contradicts itself.
When does my Canadian tax residency actually end?
On the day your residential ties are severed, which is a question of fact rather than of the date on the boarding pass. The CRA weighs the significant ties first — a dwelling available to you, a spouse or common-law partner, and dependants in Canada — then secondary ties such as licences, memberships, accounts and provincial coverage. Keeping a home available while your family stays is the pattern that most often means residency never ended at all. See departure tax on leaving Canada.
Do I pay Canadian tax if I live abroad?
Only if you remain a Canadian tax resident. Residency follows your ties rather than your address, so leaving while your home and family stay usually does not end it. Non-residents remain taxable on Canadian-source income — employment or business income earned in Canada, dispositions of taxable Canadian property, and passive amounts subject to withholding. The year you leave is its own exercise, with a deemed disposition and its own schedules. See leaving Canada.
