Does Hong Kong tax my salary if I worked outside Hong Kong?
That is the question a source-based system asks, and it is different from the one Canada asks. Hong Kong looks at where income arises; Canada looks at who is resident and then taxes worldwide income. So an amount can be outside the charge in Hong Kong and still fully taxable in Canada, and the reverse can happen too. The practical consequence is that you cannot read one country's answer off the other's. Establish where the duties were performed and under what contract, then establish whether Canadian residence continued. Both answers are needed before anyone can say which country taxes the amount at all, let alone which goes first.
If Hong Kong charges nothing, does Canada tax the full amount?
If Canadian residence continued, yes, in substance. Relief in Canada is a credit for tax another country actually charged, so where there is no charge there is nothing to credit and Canada's own rate applies to the whole amount. Clients who have had years of low or nil local tax are often surprised by this, and they should not be: the saving they enjoyed was a saving on Hong Kong tax, not on Canadian tax. The exposure is not created by the credit rules but by the residence position, which is why the residence analysis is where the money actually is on this corridor.
Which country do I deal with first, Canada or Hong Kong?
In practice the country that taxes at source moves first, because its charge arises on the income as it is earned there, and the other country then gives relief for it. That is the order the relief mechanism assumes. But on this corridor the source side may charge nothing at all, in which case there is no first country in any meaningful sense and the whole outcome sits on the Canadian residence question. Work the order out on your own facts rather than by analogy: what arose in Hong Kong, what Hong Kong charged on it, and whether Canada has a residence claim over the same income.
I live in Hong Kong but my family is in Canada, so am I non-resident?
Living somewhere else is not by itself an answer. Residence is decided on the ties you keep and the ties you create, and a spouse or children remaining in Canada is one of the strongest of them. It does not automatically settle the matter, but it puts the burden squarely on the rest of the picture: the home, the accounts, the registrations, the pattern of return visits, and what was actually dismantled on departure. Outbound clients on this corridor need the Canadian residence properly ended, with a record of how and when. A move that is never documented tends to be treated as a move that never happened.
Do I have to tell Canada about a company I kept in Hong Kong?
If you are a Canadian resident, yes, and this is the gap in most inbound files on this corridor. The obligation attaches to the interest itself, not to whether the company paid you anything, so a dormant legacy company from before the move is still a reporting matter. Separately, some kinds of income a foreign company earns can be brought into a Canadian shareholder's return before any distribution. So the two questions are what the company holds and what it earns, and both should be answered in the first Canadian filing year rather than when a reviewer asks.
Hong Kong tax was low, so can I still claim a credit in Canada?
You can claim a credit for what was charged and borne, no more. A low charge produces a small credit, and a credit is capped at the Canadian tax on the same income, so the balance left payable in Canada rises as the other side's charge falls. Two things follow. Keep the assessment and proof of payment, because the claim has to be evidenced by category of income. And do not treat a favourable local outcome as a plan: on this corridor the sums that matter are decided by the residence analysis, not by the size of the credit.
What is double taxation?
Double taxation means the same income being taxed by two authorities. It comes in two forms: juridical, where two countries each tax one person on one amount, and economic, where two different people are taxed on the same underlying profit — a company on its earnings and a shareholder on the dividend paid out of them. Relief comes from a treaty, a foreign tax credit, or an exemption, and which one applies depends on the income type. How to avoid double taxation sets out the routes.
What is cross-border tax?
Cross-border tax is what applies when income, assets or people touch more than one tax system at once — someone living in one country and earning in another, a company selling or hiring abroad, a family holding property in a second country. The work is rarely one country's rules applied harder; it is reconciling two sets of rules and claiming the relief that stops the same income being taxed twice at full rates. See what we do.
