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.
Do I really have to file two tax returns if I live in Montreal?
Yes. Quebec administers its own income tax, so a resident of the province files a federal return and a separate provincial return, assessed by a separate authority that corresponds with you in its own right. For an ordinary domestic file the two track each other closely enough that the second feels like a copy. For a cross-border file they part company: the provincial computation has its own rules for foreign income and foreign tax, its own forms, its own supporting schedules and its own audit. The practical consequence is that a position taken federally has to be worked through provincially as well, and an omission found on one return does not correct itself on the other.
Does Quebec give me the same foreign tax credit as the federal return?
It gives its own, computed separately under its own legislation, and the two do not necessarily relieve the same amount. The federal credit is limited by reference to the federal tax on the foreign income; the provincial credit is limited by reference to the provincial tax on it. Because the two tax burdens are different, one can absorb the foreign tax while the other leaves part of it unrelieved, and the unrelieved part may fall to be deducted rather than credited. The practical rule is to prepare the foreign income schedule once, then run it through both computations, rather than preparing the federal return and treating the provincial one as a transcription exercise.
I moved from Montreal to the US which return shows my departure?
Both, and they have to agree. The federal return reports worldwide income to the date residence ceased and deals with the property deemed disposed of on emigration. The provincial return covers the part of the year you were resident in the province and is filed with its own authority. The residence date is the hinge for both, so it should be determined once, on the facts, and applied consistently. Where files go wrong is a departure handled federally by one preparer while the provincial return is filed as though the person had been resident all year, which leaves two administrations holding different views of the same set of facts.
Will Revenu Quebec accept the treaty position I have taken federally?
It is not automatic, and it should not be assumed. A tax treaty is an agreement between Canada and the other country, and the provincial computation is made under provincial legislation, so the provincial return needs its position set out and supported on its own terms rather than by reference to what was filed federally. In practice this means the analysis is done once but written up twice, with the provincial return carrying the schedules and explanations the provincial authority actually asks for. It also means a query can arrive from either administration about the same income, months apart, so the working papers need to answer both without being rewritten.
My employer is outside Quebec but I work here who withholds what?
Withholding generally follows the establishment of the employer at which the employee reports for work, and where an employee does not report to any establishment it follows the establishment from which the pay is administered. That is why an out-of-province employer with someone working in Montreal often finds it has provincial obligations it did not expect, and why an employee can end up with deductions taken for the wrong province and a reconciliation to do at filing time. The employer question and the employee question are separate: the employee is taxed by the province of residence, and any mismatch between that and the deductions taken is settled on the two returns.
Do I report my foreign property to Revenu Quebec as well?
Assume the obligation exists on both sides until it has been checked for your facts. Foreign property disclosure and foreign income reporting are distinct obligations, and the provincial administration has its own reporting requirements and its own penalties for failing to meet them. A file that discloses foreign accounts federally and stays silent provincially is only half-reported. The workable approach is to build one schedule of foreign holdings with the cost, the location and the income for the year, then satisfy each administration's forms from that single schedule, so that both returns describe the same assets in the same terms.
Is "fund transfer pricing" the same thing as transfer pricing?
No — and if you came here to calculate FTP, this is not it. Fund transfer pricing is a bank's internal allocation of funding costs and benefits between its own business units, a treasury and asset-liability management discipline used to measure branch or product profitability. Tax transfer pricing is about prices between legally separate related parties across borders, and about which country taxes the resulting profit. The words overlap; the fields do not. See our transfer pricing work.
I work remotely from another country for a company back home — who taxes me?
Usually the country you are physically in, because employment income is generally sourced where the work is done, with your residence country taxing it as well if you are resident there and giving credit. Three things follow: your employer may acquire withholding and social security obligations where you sit, a treaty tie-breaker may be needed if both countries call you resident, and a short trip that becomes a long stay can cross a residence threshold nobody was watching. See remote workers and digital nomads.
