Case study 1
Designating a home owned through years spent working abroad
The client had bought a home, left the country for a posting, and returned before selling. The property had never been let and they had assumed the whole gain was covered. We assembled the residence position year by year from employment records, tenancies and old filings, computed the exempt fraction on that basis, and filed the designation naming the qualifying years. The engagement produced a year by year residence history with evidence behind each entry, a completed designation, and a clear statement of the part of the gain that remained taxable.
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Case study 2
A designation never filed and a query that followed
A sale had been reported in an earlier year with the gain treated as covered, and no designation on file. The query, when it came, asked for the thing that had never been produced. We reconstructed the ownership and residence record, prepared the designation for the years that qualified, and set out the position in a written response rather than a bare resubmission. The engagement produced a documented claim for the years it could support, an amended position for the year of sale, and a file that answers the question it was actually asked.
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Case study 3
Two properties owned in the same years and one claim
The client had owned a city flat and a country property across overlapping years and sold one of them. A year attached to one property is not available for the other, so the choice of which years went where decided the outcome, and it could not be revisited afterwards. We modelled the alternatives against the actual ownership and residence history, documented why the chosen allocation was made, and filed on it. The engagement produced a reasoned allocation of years, the designation itself, and a written record of the decision for the property still held.
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Case study 4
Joint owners whose residence histories did not match
A couple sold a jointly owned home after a period in which one of them had lived abroad and the other had not. Each interest is designated separately, so one exempt fraction was full and the other was not. We built both histories, computed each side independently, and made sure the two returns agreed on the shared facts of the purchase and the sale while differing where the histories differed. The engagement produced consistent filings for both owners and a written explanation of why the results were not the same.
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Case study 5
Selling a Canadian home after the owner had become non-resident
The client had left the country, kept the house, and sold it several years later. Two things had to be settled in order: which years of ownership still qualified for the designation, and the separate process that attaches to a disposition by someone no longer resident here. Treating either as the whole answer produces a filing that is half right. We built the residence history, computed the exempt fraction on it, and ran the disposition steps alongside the designation so that the two accounts of the same sale agreed with each other. The engagement produced a designation for the qualifying years, a completed disposition file, and one consistent set of facts across both.
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Case study 6
A returning resident choosing which years to designate
The client had come back after a long absence and was preparing to sell. Because the exemption is built year by year, the question was not whether to designate but which years to attach, given another property held for part of the same period. We set out the options against the actual history, showed what each produced, and recorded the reasoning before the sale rather than after it. The engagement produced a decision taken in advance with its evidence assembled, and a designation filed in the year of sale that matched it.
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Case study 7
Expanding Abroad — Branch or Subsidiary, Decided on the Numbers
The choice sets the tax on profits, the treatment of early losses, and what it costs to take money home later. The file models all three across the first years rather than deciding on the incorporation cost alone.
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Case study 8
Withholding Reduced by the Right Article
Dividends, interest and royalties each have their own article and their own rate, and the payer applies whichever it is satisfied of. Establishing entitlement before payment is what secures the lower rate at source.
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