What do I file if I only worked in Canada for a few weeks?
Ordinarily a Canadian return for the year, reporting the employment income attributable to the days you physically worked in Canada, with credit for whatever was withheld from that pay. Whether tax is ultimately due depends on the treaty: where your presence and your remuneration stay within the limits the relevant article sets, the income can be exempt, but the exemption is claimed rather than assumed, and the return is where it is claimed if no waiver was obtained beforehand. So the filing set is the return plus the records that support the workday split: your itinerary, the employer’s assignment letter, and the pay records for the period.
My employer is foreign and pays me abroad — do I still file in Canada?
Yes. Work physically performed in Canada is taxable in Canada regardless of who pays it, where the contract was signed, or which bank account received the money. That single point causes more surprise in these files than anything else, because everything visible to the employee, the employer, the payroll, the currency and the account, points somewhere else. What decides the matter is where the person was standing when they did the work. A treaty article may then exempt the income where presence and remuneration stay inside its limits, and that is worth establishing, but it is relief from a liability that exists rather than proof that none arose.
Does a treaty exemption mean I do not have to file anything?
No. It means there is likely nothing to pay, which is a different thing. The exemption has to be claimed on the record somewhere, and there are two places to do it. In advance, a waiver can relieve the withholding before the work is paid, which is much the better outcome. After the fact, the return for the year is where the position is set out and the withheld tax is reclaimed. The difference between the two is cash and time: without the waiver, tax comes off the pay and stays with the CRA until a return is filed and assessed, which is most of a year of waiting for a few weeks of work.
What does my employer have to file, and what do I file myself?
They are separate obligations and both get missed. The withholding on pay for Canadian workdays is the employer’s to operate and remit, even where the employer sits outside Canada and the payroll runs abroad, and the reporting of that pay and that withholding is theirs as well. Your own filing is the return for the year, which reports the Canadian portion of the employment income, takes the treaty position where one is available, and credits the tax withheld. On assignment files we usually work both sides at once, because a return that splits the pay one way and an employer report that splits it another produces exactly the correspondence everyone wanted to avoid.
How do I split my pay between Canadian and non-Canadian workdays?
On workdays, and the records have to exist before anyone needs them. The Canadian portion of employment income follows the days physically worked in Canada, so the denominator matters as much as the numerator: total working days for the period, and of those, the days in Canada. Keep the itinerary, the boarding passes, the hotel folios and the assignment letter as the trip happens. Reconstructing a travel pattern from memory a year later is the least satisfactory part of these engagements. Where the split is documented as you go, the return is straightforward and the treaty position, if there is one, is easy to support.
Do I need the waiver before the trip or before payday?
Before the work is paid, which in practice usually means before the assignment begins, since payroll rarely waits. That timing is the whole of the difference. A waiver in place means the pay for the Canadian workdays is not reduced by withholding at all. A waiver applied for too late leaves the withholding taken, and the position then has to be recovered through the return for the year: the same destination, at the cost of a long wait and a filing that would otherwise have been simple. If the assignment is already under way, apply for what can still be relieved and plan the return for the rest.
What is a dual-status alien?
Someone who is a US tax resident for part of a year and a non-resident for the rest of it — almost always the year of arrival or the year of departure. You file one return covering both periods, with worldwide income and ordinary deductions for the resident part and US-source income under the non-resident rules for the other. Several ordinary reliefs, including joint filing, are restricted for the year. See dual-status alien.
What is RNOR status and why does it matter to a returning NRI?
Resident but Not Ordinarily Resident is a transitional Indian status that can apply for a limited period after you return, based on how long you were non-resident before. While it lasts, certain foreign income stays outside the Indian net that would be taxed once you become an ordinary resident — which makes the timing of a return date, and of realising foreign gains, a genuine planning decision rather than an administrative one. See the RNOR window.
