I moved to Canada in June — do I need Form T1248?
Yes. The year you arrive is a part-year residency year, and the schedule is what records the date your Canadian residency began. Everything else on the return leans on that date: the split between the worldwide income you report for the resident part of the year and the Canadian-source income that belongs to the rest, and the proration of the personal credits you can claim for a year you were not here for all of. The month you moved does not change the requirement. It only changes what the schedule says.
Do I file Form T1248 if I earned nothing in Canada that year?
The schedule is about dates, not amounts. It is filed because the return is a transition-year return, and that is decided by when your residency started or ended rather than by how much income there was or how much tax is owing. A year with no Canadian earnings still has a residency split in it, and that split has to be stated so the CRA can see which part of the year your worldwide income was reportable in. Leaving the schedule off a quiet year is one of the more common reasons a newcomer's first assessment does not match the return.
Do my spouse and I each need our own Form T1248?
Each return carries its own schedule, because residency is decided person by person. That matters more than it sounds, because partners often have different dates. One arrives to start a job while the other stays behind to sell a house or finish a school year, and the date that belongs on each return is the one that fits that person's own ties. Filing one schedule for a couple, or copying one person's dates onto both returns, produces two returns that cannot both be right and an assessment that has to be unpicked later.
Is Form T1248 for emigrants as well as newcomers?
Yes. Arrival, departure and part-year residency all run through the same schedule. On a departure year it carries the date the CRA treats your Canadian residency as ending, and that is the date the deemed disposition of your property is measured at, so it sets the day your holdings are valued for the departure calculation. On an arrival year it does the mirror job. The form does not change; what changes is which direction the transition runs, and therefore which dates and which income split the rest of the return is built on.
Which arrival date goes on the form if my family came later?
The date on the schedule has to be the date your own residential ties to Canada were established, which is not always the date stamped in a passport or written on a permanent residence document. Someone who flies in, signs a lease and starts work has a date. Someone who visits, goes back, and returns months later with a household has a choice to justify rather than a date to copy. Whichever you use, the rest of the return has to be consistent with it, and the evidence behind it — tenancy, employment, school enrolment, when the household actually moved — is worth keeping.
Can I file my first Canadian return without Form T1248?
The return will go in, and then the trouble starts. Without the schedule the CRA has no stated residency period to prorate your credits against, so the full-year amounts you claimed look unsupported and get adjusted, and the income you reported as belonging to only part of the year has nothing on file explaining why. The usual result is an assessment that differs from the return and a correspondence loop to fix it. Supplying the dates with the return is considerably less work than establishing them afterwards against an assessment that already assumed something else.
Does foreign employment income create RRSP room?
Only where it is earned income reported on a Canadian return. RRSP room is built from earned income that Canada sees, so a non-resident year of foreign salary generally builds none, and foreign tax paid does not create room of its own. This is why people returning to Canada after years abroad find their contribution room much smaller than the years elapsed suggest, and why the notice of assessment is the only reliable statement of it. See returning to Canada after years abroad.
What is RNOR status?
Resident but not ordinarily resident — a transitional category in India between non-residence and full residence, reached on the day counts after returning from a period abroad. While it lasts, certain foreign income stays outside the Indian tax base, which makes the timing of a return to India worth planning rather than leaving to chance. It is temporary, and the window is set by the day-count rules. See RNOR status.
