When should I start planning a move out of Canada?
Before the date is fixed, because the date is one of the variables. A departure date follows from when your ties to Canada are actually severed, so it can be arranged rather than simply recorded, and moving it moves the values everything is computed on. Once the year has closed, almost nothing is left to arrange and the work becomes reporting what happened. The useful window is the one where the move is intended but not yet done: the inventory can be built, valuations lined up and the cash question answered while the answers still change something.
What is the first thing to work out before leaving Canada?
The split. Which of your assets fall inside the deemed disposition on the day you cease to be resident, and which keep their Canadian tax hooks and are taxed here only when they are actually sold. Every later decision hangs off that one: how large the charge is, whether a loss can be arranged against it, whether security has to be found, and which holdings you might rather deal with while still resident. Start anywhere else and the work gets redone once the split is finally drawn.
Can I choose the date I stop being a Canadian resident?
Not by declaring it, but it is not simply handed to you either. Residency ceases when the ties that made you resident are severed, and the timing of those events is often within your control: when a lease ends, when a family follows, when a home is dealt with. That makes the departure date a planning variable rather than a fact to be discovered afterwards. It also means the sequence has to be deliberate, because the same set of moves in a different order can produce a different date and a different charge.
Should I sell my investments before I leave Canada?
Sometimes, and the comparison is concrete. If you sell while resident you have a real disposition, real proceeds and cash in hand. If you hold, the departure day treats the property as sold at market value anyway, with no proceeds to fund the tax from. Holdings sitting at a loss point the other way, since the loss can be put to work against the deemed gains. The decision is asset by asset rather than a single rule, and it can only be made before the date, not after it.
How do I prove what my assets were worth on departure?
With evidence struck at the time. For anything with a market price that is straightforward if you collect it then and awkward if you leave it. For private shares, land or an interest in a business it means a valuation built on the information that existed at the departure date, which is far easier to assemble while the date is recent. The figure you report is the figure you will defend, so treat the valuation as part of the move itself rather than part of the filing that follows it.
What if I cannot pay tax on a sale that never happened?
That is the ordinary case rather than the unusual one, and it is why the cash question belongs in the planning stage. There are two routes. One is to arrange real dispositions before the date, so there are proceeds to fund the charge. The other is to defer the amount against security, which means identifying beforehand what you are able to post and whether posting it suits you better than selling. Both take preparation. Arriving at the filing with neither in place is what turns a manageable charge into a forced sale.
What is departure tax in Canada?
When you cease Canadian residency you are treated as having disposed of most capital property at fair market value on your departure date, and the accrued gain becomes taxable in that year even though nothing was sold. Some property is excluded, notably Canadian real property, and an election can defer the payment with security. The departure-year return carries its own schedules listing what you owned. Our departure tax estimator sizes it.
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.
