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.
What proof do I need that I am no longer a Canadian resident?
The question is decided on facts rather than on a form, so what you need is a file and not a single document. Tenancy or ownership of a home where you now live, the employment contract, residence permits, the closing or repurposing of accounts, where the family lives, memberships and licences given up, and a record of travel. No one item settles it and no one item sinks it. What matters is that the file reads consistently and that it is dated, which is far easier while the events are happening than years afterwards.
Does keeping a bank account back home make me resident?
On its own, no. Residency is judged on the pattern of ties taken together, and a dormant account is a weak tie. The reason we still ask about accounts is that they rarely sit alone: an account receiving rent implies a property, a card in regular use implies visits, and a joint account implies somebody else. Those are the facts that carry weight. Keep the account if it is genuinely useful, but be able to explain what it is for and what passes through it.
My family stayed behind, how does that affect my residency?
It is one of the heaviest facts in the file, and the one most often glossed over. Where a spouse and children live goes directly to where the home is, and an arrangement described as temporary will be tested against how long it actually lasted and what was done in the meantime. That does not decide the question by itself, but it does mean the rest of the file has to be stronger and the reasons for the arrangement have to be documented at the time. We would rather raise it at the start than meet it in a query letter.
What records should I keep while working in the Gulf?
Keep the things that show where your life is, and keep them dated. Your tenancy, utility accounts and residence permit; the employment contract and each renewal; the entry and exit record or its electronic equivalent; and evidence of what you disposed of when you left. Scan them as you get them rather than at the end. Most of the cost and most of the difficulty in this work comes from reconstructing a record years afterwards from banks and employers who are no longer obliged to help you.
Do I still file anything if I have no tax to pay?
Often yes, and the two questions are separate. A filing obligation can arise from the type of income or from the status you are claiming, not from whether a balance is owed. There is also a practical reason: a filed return records the position you took and puts it on the record, while silence leaves the matter open to be raised later on the authority's terms rather than yours. Where nothing is genuinely required, we will tell you so in writing rather than file for the sake of filing.
Can you review my residency position before I make a move?
That is the right time to do it. Before a move the evidence can be arranged rather than reconstructed: the lease dated properly, the accounts closed in a sensible order, the departure reporting anticipated instead of discovered afterwards. A review before the move usually takes a conversation about the plan and a look at what you hold. The same review afterwards takes a document hunt across two countries. The fee is agreed in writing either way, but the earlier engagement is the smaller piece of work.
What happens if the two countries disagree about which of them can tax me?
The treaty has a procedure for exactly that. You apply to the competent authority in your residence country, which takes the case up with its counterpart, and the two negotiate a position that removes the double taxation. Some treaties add binding arbitration if they cannot agree. It is slow and it runs on documents, so the practical work is preserving the record and filing protective claims while the clock runs. See our treaty work.
How do you avoid double taxation?
You claim relief once, in the right country, in the right order. Usually the source country taxes first, the residence country then gives a credit for that tax against its own charge on the same income, and a treaty caps the source-country rate. Getting the order wrong is what produces a double charge you then have to unwind. The mechanism differs by income type, which is why we map the whole position before filing either return. See how to avoid double taxation.
