Do I have to file at home while living in Ireland?
It depends on residence, not on address — except for US citizens and green-card holders, for whom the answer is yes regardless of where they live. We settle the residence question first, because every other answer follows from it.
Is there a treaty between my country and Ireland?
That is verified rather than assumed: we confirm which treaty text governs Ireland and your home country for the year in question, because a protocol can move a rate or an article between years. If there is no treaty, unilateral credit rules are what prevent double taxation.
I own property in Ireland. Where is the rent taxed?
Rent from immovable property is almost always taxable where the property is situated, frequently by withholding on the gross amount, with your home country taxing the same income and giving credit. A net-basis election, where one exists, is usually the difference between tax on profit and tax on turnover.
Do I pay Irish tax if I sell my Dublin apartment after leaving?
Property is the one asset class where location usually wins. Treaties normally allow the country where land and buildings sit to tax the gain on them, so the Irish claim survives your departure. Your new country of residence may tax the same gain as well, and relief then comes through credit rather than exemption. Two practical points decide how smoothly it goes. Ask before completion whether a clearance procedure applies to your sale, because where one does it is obtained in advance and not corrected afterwards. And keep the purchase documents: a gain computed without evidenced cost is a gain computed against you.
What tax does a non-resident buyer pay on Irish property?
The purchase itself is usually the simpler half. A transfer duty is charged on the buyer at completion and handled through the conveyance, so it is a cost to budget for rather than a filing to make. Ask your solicitor for the rate applying in your year rather than relying on a figure quoted somewhere general. What follows matters more. Owning brings recurring local charges, and letting brings a filing obligation and a collection mechanism that can place part of the duty on an agent when the owner lives abroad. Decide before you buy whose name the property goes into, because changing it later is itself a disposal.
Can I claim main residence relief on a home I left?
Possibly, but not automatically, and the relief in one country is not the relief in the other. Each system defines a main home in its own way and gives relief by reference to the periods you actually occupied it, so a house that was exempt while you lived in it is rarely exempt for the whole period of ownership once you move abroad. Where two countries both give a form of relief, they will not agree on the qualifying years, which can leave a slice of gain taxable in one and exempt in the other. Establish the occupation history in writing at the outset; it is much harder to reconstruct at sale.
Who withholds tax when a non-resident sells Irish property?
Where a country makes the buyer responsible, the mechanism is the same everywhere and it catches people out for the same reason: the withholding is applied to the sale price rather than to the gain, so it routinely exceeds the tax actually due. The excess comes back by filing a return, not by asking the buyer for it. The way to avoid financing that gap is to deal with any clearance procedure before completion, since it is granted in advance. Ask your solicitor at the point of instruction rather than in the week of closing, and tell your tax adviser in the same conversation.
I inherited a house in Ireland, what do I need to file?
Two different taxes may be in play and they fall on different people. Some countries tax the estate, others charge the person who receives, and some tax neither event as such but treat the assets as disposed of at the moment of death instead. Ireland and Canada do not take the same approach, so an inheritance can create a filing for you in one country and for the estate in the other. Whatever the outcome, fix the value at the date of death in writing, because that value becomes the cost you deduct when the house is eventually sold and it is the one most often missing years later.
Should I sell my Irish property before or after I move?
Timing changes who taxes the gain and sometimes how much of it is taxed. The Irish claim on property within the country does not depend on where you live, but your other country claim does, and that charge switches on or off with residence. So a sale in the year you move can be split by circumstances that have nothing to do with the property, and relief for periods of occupation is measured against a timeline the move interrupts. There is no general answer that fits every case. We model both sequences from your own dates and give you the comparison in writing before you instruct an agent.
How do families with assets in two countries handle inheritance?
With paperwork built for both systems rather than one. In practice that means wills that work where each asset actually sits, an executor with authority a foreign bank or land registry will accept, clearance certificates before the estate distributes so the executor is not left personally exposed, and an estate tax exposure calculation done while the person is alive and can still act on it. Doing it afterwards costs more and forecloses most of the options. See cross-border wills and trusts.
Is a gift from abroad taxable in Canada?
Not to the person receiving it — Canada does not tax gifts in the recipient's hands, whatever the amount. The tax questions sit elsewhere. A gift of property rather than cash is a disposition for the giver, at market value. Attribution rules can send the income the gift later earns back to the giver where the recipient is a spouse or a minor. And a gift large enough to be noticed should be documented, because "it was a gift" is a claim that gets tested. See a Canadian receiving a foreign gift.
