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.
Does the treaty stop a US state from taxing my income?
Generally no, and this is the most expensive misunderstanding in North American files. The treaty binds the two federal governments. A state is not a party to it, and many states do not conform their own rules to it, so a person or company protected from federal tax can still be taxable at state level on the same income. States apply their own residency tests, their own rules for when a business has a taxable connection to the state, and their own sourcing of employment income. The consequence is that the federal analysis, however carefully done, is only the first half of the work, and the state analysis has to be done state by state.
Why does my old state still treat me as a resident after I moved?
Because state residency rules are their own tests and some of them are difficult to exit. Several states look at where your permanent home is maintained and count days present, so keeping a dwelling available in the old state, or spending substantial time there, can leave you resident under its law long after you have settled elsewhere. Others apply a domicile test that asks where your true fixed home is, which is not answered simply by leaving. The federal treaty tie-breaker does not resolve it. What tends to resolve it is the same evidence that settles a residence question anywhere: the home, the family, and where the ordinary business of life is conducted.
Do I owe state tax on days I worked there while travelling?
Often yes, and the obligation usually falls on the employer as well as on you. Most states source employment income to where the duties were physically performed, so days worked in a state can create income taxable there and a withholding and reporting obligation for the employer, even when the employee lives and is paid somewhere else. Some states apply a threshold before that starts and others do not, and the rules differ from state to state rather than following a national pattern. The only workable approach is a day count by state, kept as you travel. Reconstructing it from expense claims a year later is possible but far weaker evidence.
My employer moved me to Ontario do I still file a state return?
Quite possibly, for two reasons. The first is residency: if you have not exited residency under that state's own rules, it may continue to tax you on income from everywhere, regardless of where you now live and regardless of the treaty. The second is sourcing: income connected with that state, rent from a property there, a share of employment income for duties still performed there, or equity compensation earned while you worked there, generally remains taxable by it. The move ends neither automatically. Deal with the residency exit deliberately, document it, and expect the state return to continue for at least as long as sourced income keeps arriving.
Can I claim a Canadian credit for state income tax I paid?
Sometimes, and the answer turns on the character of the tax rather than its name. The credit relieves income or profits tax imposed by a foreign country, and the rules contemplate tax imposed by a political subdivision as well as by the central government, so a state income tax computed on income can qualify while a levy computed on gross receipts or on capital is a different animal. Where the credit is limited, the unrelieved part may be deductible instead, which relieves at a lower rate but is better than nothing. The order of preparation matters: settle the state position first, because it feeds the Canadian return, not the other way round.
Which province taxes me if I move partway through the year?
For an individual, provincial tax generally follows where you were resident at the end of the year, not where the income was earned during it, so a move between provinces usually puts the whole year's provincial tax with the destination. That is a different rule from the one that applies between countries, where the year is split at the date residence changes. The practical effect is that the deductions taken from your pay in the province you left do not match the return you end up filing, and the difference is settled on assessment. Employment carried on in a province through an establishment, and business income, follow their own allocation rules.
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.
