Do I need to file if my scholarship is exempt under a treaty?
Yes, and this is where the benefit is usually lost. The exemption is not a description of your circumstances that the authority notices on its own. It is a claim, and a claim exists only once it is made in a filing for the year. Leave the year unfiled and the default applies instead, which is ordinary taxation of the income. The filing may report no tax at all, and it still has to be made. Treat the return as the instrument that creates the exemption rather than as a report of one already granted.
Do my years as a student count towards residency day-counts?
They may not, and that is one of the concessions written into these rules. Presence in a country as a student or trainee can be left out of the count that would otherwise make you resident there, which matters enormously if your home country still taxes you on your worldwide income. But the exclusion behaves like the income exemption: it depends on the position being stated in a filing. Say nothing and your days are simply days, the count runs as normal, and ordinary residence is the answer you are left with.
I earned nothing this year — is a filing still needed?
Usually yes, for a reason that has nothing to do with tax due. Two things you may want later rest on filings for the years in question: that your study presence sat outside the residency count, and that particular income was exempt for a limited period. Both are established year by year. A year with no income and no filing leaves a hole in that record, and holes get filled with the default, ordinary residence, at the moment somebody asks. The cost of filing a nil year is small; the cost of a gap is argued years afterwards.
How long does a treaty exemption for students and researchers last?
For a limited period rather than indefinitely, and the length is set by the particular article between the two countries, not by your programme. Practically, two dates decide it: when the period starts, usually tied to arrival or to the beginning of the study or teaching, and when it ends. Income falling inside the window can be exempt; the same income a term later is ordinary. Because the boundary is a date, the work is establishing it from your enrolment and funding documents at the outset, not reconstructing it when the exemption stops.
Is my teaching stipend treated the same as my research grant?
Not necessarily. These articles distinguish between kinds of receipt — a scholarship, a grant, remuneration for teaching — and they do not always give them the same treatment or the same period. Your university may pay all of it on one schedule and describe it with one word, which is why the funding letters matter more than the payment advice. We read the award documents, characterise each element separately, and claim only what the article covers. The parts it does not cover are ordinary income, and reporting them properly is what makes the claim on the rest credible.
What if I never claimed the student exemption in earlier years?
Those years sat on the default, so they were taxed as ordinary residence and any exempt element was not exempt in practice. The position can often be corrected, but it is corrected year by year and each year has its own limit, so the first task is establishing which are still open. What the correction needs is documentary: enrolment records, the funding award, arrival dates and evidence of the purpose of your presence. Assemble those and the claim is straightforward. Argue it from recollection and it is not.
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.
How long do I have to be out of the country to stop being resident?
There is no single period that settles it. Canada looks at whether your ties were actually severed, not at a day count; the United States taxes citizens regardless of where they live; India applies day-count thresholds with a second limb reaching back over earlier years. Time abroad is evidence, not a rule — what decides it is where your home, family and economic life sit. See tax residency.
