Do I need to come to your office?
No, though you are welcome to: we have offices in India, the USA, Canada and the UAE. Documents move through a secure portal, and meetings can be in person or by video, arranged around your time zone. Clients in the Gulf, India, Europe and across North America all work with us the same way.
Does it matter which of your offices handles my file?
No. The same named reviewer signs off, the same authorisation is filed with the tax authorities, and the same fixed fee is agreed in writing before any work starts.
I moved to Dubai for work am I still a Canadian tax resident?
Moving is not by itself ceasing residence. Residence turns on where your settled life is: a home available to you, where your spouse and children live, and the everyday ties that follow a person rather than a passport. A posting abroad with the family home kept, the car insured and the family still here usually does not end residence, however many days you spend away. This matters more in the Gulf than almost anywhere, because if residence never ended you remain taxable here on worldwide employment income and there is little or no local tax to credit against it. The analysis is worth doing before the departure rather than reconstructing it after a query letter arrives.
Do I pay Canadian tax on a salary that was never taxed abroad?
If you remained resident, yes. The foreign tax credit relieves tax you actually paid to the other country, so where that country imposes no personal income tax there is nothing to credit and the Canadian liability stands in full. This is the point on which most Gulf files turn, and it is why the absence of local tax is not an answer to a Canadian assessment. The question is never the local rate. It is whether you were resident here during the period the salary was earned, and, where a treaty applies, whether its tie-breaker can help at all. A tie-breaker only assists a person who is resident in both places under each country's own law.
What does the CRA look at when deciding whether I left Canada?
The test is factual and cumulative rather than a checklist with a pass mark. The strongest indicators are a dwelling kept available to you, a spouse or dependants who stayed behind, and the ordinary furniture of a settled life: health cover, a driving licence, a car, club memberships, personal property in storage, and bank and investment accounts operated from here. Days abroad are evidence, not the test itself. What decides most files is whether the departure looks permanent in its arrangements. A home genuinely let to an arm's length tenant under a commercial lease reads very differently from one left empty for visits. Gather that evidence as you go; it is worth far more contemporaneous than assembled later.
Should I file a departure return when I move to the Gulf?
If you genuinely ceased residence, yes. The year of departure is filed as a part-year return, reporting worldwide income up to the date residence ended and Canadian-source income after it. Two things happen at that date. Most capital property is treated as disposed of and immediately reacquired, so accrued gains come into the departure year whether or not anything was sold, with certain categories excluded. And Canadian-source amounts paid to you afterwards, rent for instance, move onto a withholding basis instead of the ordinary return. The practical value is that a departure return fixes the date on the record, which starts the clock on the question rather than leaving it open indefinitely.
I kept my Toronto house and rent it out does that keep me resident?
Not on its own, but it is the single fact that causes the most trouble. A property let at market rent to an unrelated tenant under a real lease is an investment, and investments do not make a person resident. A property kept furnished, left empty, or occupied by family and available whenever you return is a home available to you, which is a primary residential tie. The difference lies in the arrangements, not the intention. If you do let it, the rent becomes Canadian-source income of a non-resident and falls under a withholding regime, with an election available to file a return on the net rental income instead, usually the better outcome once interest and expenses are counted.
Do I report Gulf bank accounts and my end-of-service gratuity?
If you were resident here for the period concerned, both matter. Foreign bank and investment accounts are specified foreign property, and once the total cost of your foreign holdings exceeds the reporting threshold they belong on the annual disclosure. Interest earned on them is income whether or not it is remitted to Canada. An end-of-service payment is treated according to what it actually is under its own terms: deferred remuneration for services, a retiring allowance, or a pension-type entitlement, each of which is handled differently. Get the employment contract and the settlement calculation before deciding anything. The local label rarely maps onto a Canadian category on its own.
Can I avoid capital gains tax on a foreign property?
Not by virtue of it being foreign — there is no exemption for that, and the "keep it offshore" advice you may have read is how people acquire penalties rather than savings. What genuinely reduces the gain is ordinary and legitimate: principal residence relief where the property qualifies and the designation is made correctly, a properly built cost base including acquisition costs and capital improvements, the timing of the disposition, the treaty rules for real property, and credit for the foreign tax paid. See principal residence and foreign property.
What is a permanent establishment, and how easily do we create one?
A taxable presence in another country under the treaty — typically a fixed place of business such as an office, branch, factory or workshop, or a dependent agent habitually concluding contracts on your behalf. Some treaties add a services test measured in days. Purely preparatory or auxiliary activity is excluded, but that carve-out is narrower than it sounds: one senior employee working from home in the other country, with authority, has been enough. See business profits and permanent establishment.
