Do I need to file Form T2091 if the gain is exempt?
The designation is what creates the exemption, so it is filed whether or not the result is nil. The exemption is not a status a property has; it is a claim made for particular years, and the form is where those years are named and the exempt fraction is computed. Assuming it applies and filing nothing leaves the sale reported without the thing that removes the tax from it. The practical risk is not the immediate assessment, which may look fine, but the later query on a return that claims relief nobody can point to.
I lived abroad while I owned my home, does that matter?
Yes, and it is the usual reason a designation is not straightforward. The exemption is built up year by year, and a year counts only where the residence condition is met for it. Years spent outside the country drop out of the qualifying count even where the house stood empty and nobody else ever lived in it. So the question is not whether the property was your home in a general sense, but what your residence position was in each separate year of ownership, and that is a history worth assembling before the form is completed rather than during it.
Who files the designation when a home is owned jointly?
Each owner designates their own interest. The form follows the person rather than the property, so two owners of the same home file separately and can reach different results, because the years that qualify depend on each person's own residence history. That surprises couples who moved at different times, or where one stayed behind. The sale is a single transaction, but the exempt fraction is computed twice. We work both histories before either return is prepared, so the two filings are consistent about the facts they share and correctly different about the facts they do not.
Does renting the property out change who has to file?
It does not change who files; it changes what the computation produces and what evidence is needed. The person disposing of the interest still makes the designation. What a rental period affects is the character of the use in those years and the records standing behind them, and there are elections that bear on how a change of use is treated. The point worth holding on to is that a property never rented is not automatically fully exempt either. Residence in each year is the driver, and letting is only one of the things that can interrupt it.
I sold the house through an attorney while unwell, who designates?
The designation belongs to the owner of the interest, so it stays with you even where somebody else signed the contract of sale under a power of attorney. An attorney acts in your name; they do not take on the interest or the claim that goes with it. What changes is practical. The person handling the sale may not hold the ownership records, and may not know which years you were living outside the country, so the history has to come from you or from your papers rather than be inferred from the transaction. Settle it before the return for the year of sale is prepared, not afterwards.
Do I file the form if I never lived in Canada at all?
The form designates a property as a principal residence, so it is the right document where that claim is being made for at least some years of ownership. If no year qualifies, the designation is not what helps you. The disposition is still reported, and there are separate obligations that attach to a non-resident disposing of property, which usually matter far more on that file. Which route applies is decided by the residence history and by the character of the property, so it is worth settling both before choosing a form to fill in.
Do green card holders living abroad have to file US taxes?
Yes. A lawful permanent resident is a US tax resident, taxed on worldwide income, and that status does not end simply because you moved away — it ends when it is formally abandoned or administratively terminated. Two traps follow. Filing as a non-resident on a treaty claim can put the immigration status itself at risk. And ending the status after holding it long-term can bring you inside the expatriation regime. See giving up a green card.
What is the US exit tax and who actually pays it?
How much it is depends on your unrealised gains rather than on a rate, because it is the expatriation regime rather than a fee. A citizen who gives up citizenship, or a long-term permanent resident whose status ends, is tested against three conditions; meet any one and you are a covered expatriate, treated as having sold your worldwide assets the day before you left, with an exclusion for a slice of the resulting net gain — $890,000 for 2025. Deferred compensation, retirement accounts and interests in trusts are handled under separate rules rather than the deemed sale. Form 8854 reports it. See Form 8854.
