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.
My employer moved me to the United States mid-year, how am I taxed?
When an assignment starts partway through a year, two separate questions decide the answer. Employment income is generally taxed by reference to where the work was actually performed. Everything else follows your residence status in each country. Clients routinely conflate the two. The first step is to fix the date your residence genuinely changed, which turns on where your home and family are rather than on the date printed on the assignment letter. Once that is settled, the employment income is apportioned and both returns are prepared from the same apportionment, so the two filings tell the same story if either is ever examined.
Do my restricted units get taxed twice if they vest after I move?
Not usually, though both countries may have a claim on part of the same vesting. Equity granted in one country and vested after a move is generally sourced over the period between grant and vest, so a portion belongs to the country you worked in while it was accruing and the rest to the country you are in when it vests. Relief for the overlap comes through a foreign tax credit rather than an exemption, which means it has to be claimed and evidenced with payroll records from both employers. Getting the sourcing period right is what decides how much credit is available to you.
I have pensions in two countries, which one gets to tax them?
Pensions are dealt with article by article in the relevant treaty, and the answer differs with the kind of pension. A private pension, a state social-security pension and a pension arising from government service are often handled under separate rules, so one of your pensions can be taxable only where you live while another stays taxable where it was earned. Where both countries tax the same payment, relief comes through a credit in your country of residence. The practical work is identifying which article each payment falls under before any return is prepared, because that single decision drives both filings.
Is the relocation package my employer paid a taxable benefit?
Parts of it usually are and parts usually are not, and the split is rarely what the employee expects. Payments reimbursing a real cost of the move are treated differently from payments that top up income or compensate you for a loss on a house sale, and the two countries involved may not draw that line in the same place. The employer's payroll treatment is a starting point, not an answer, because it reflects one country's rules and one interpretation of them. We work through the package item by item and record why each element was reported the way it was.
My family stayed in Oakville while I work abroad, am I still resident?
Very possibly, yes. Residence in Canada is decided on ties rather than on physical whereabouts, and a home kept available to you together with a spouse and children still living in it are among the strongest ties there are. A treaty can break the tie in favour of the other country, but that is a second step which has to be claimed and supported, not assumed. Filing as a non-resident while the family home stays open is one of the commoner ways an assignment file goes wrong, because the problem surfaces years later with interest already running on it.
What is tax equalisation and does it change what I owe?
Tax equalisation is an arrangement between you and your employer, not with either tax authority. The employer's intention is that the assignment leaves you roughly where you would have been at home, so it withholds a hypothetical amount and settles the real liability itself. What you owe the authorities is unchanged by it. What changes is who bears it, and the reconciliation between the hypothetical withholding and the returns actually filed is where errors surface. That reconciliation needs the filed returns of both countries set beside the employer's own calculation, and it is worth checking rather than accepting.
Is double taxation legal?
Yes. Nothing prevents two countries from taxing the same income under their own domestic law — each is exercising its own jurisdiction. What treaties and credit systems do is relieve the outcome rather than prohibit the charge, and relief is generally something you must claim on a return or a form, not something applied automatically. Miss the claim and the double charge stands. Double taxation explains the mechanism.
What counts as foreign income, and what is a foreign tax?
Foreign income is income sourced outside the country you are filing in — where the work was done, where the property sits, where the payer is resident, depending on the type. A foreign tax, for credit purposes, is a levy imposed by another country that functions as an income tax and that you were legally required to pay. Consumption taxes, property taxes and most social contributions are not, however real the cost. Sourcing is decided by rule, not by which bank received it. See the foreign tax credit.
