Am I still a Canadian resident if I work abroad?
Possibly. Residence is not decided by where your employer sits or where you sleep most nights. It is decided by whether your ties to Canada continued while you were away. A dwelling kept available for your use, a spouse or dependants who stayed behind, bank accounts, a driving licence, provincial health coverage and professional memberships all speak to the same question. Working abroad on a posting that ends, with the house shut up rather than let out and the family still here, usually leaves you a factual resident throughout. Working abroad after genuinely dismantling those ties usually does not. The distinction is evidential, which means the year to gather the evidence is the year you leave, not the year a letter arrives asking about it.
Does keeping my house in Canada make me resident?
On its own it is not conclusive, but it is the tie that carries the most weight, because it is the one a reader can picture. What matters is availability rather than ownership. A house let on a long lease at arm's length, with a tenant in possession and no right for you to walk in, is a far weaker tie than the same house left furnished and empty, or let to a relative, or let on a term that happens to end when your posting does. Furniture stored in it counts too. If you intend a property to stop being a residential tie, the lease, the inventory and the handover have to say so at the time, not in hindsight.
If my spouse stays in Canada am I still resident?
Usually yes, and this is the tie people most often underestimate. A spouse or common-law partner living in Canada, and children at school here, are given great weight in their own right, because a person's settled life is taken to be where their household is. That can be displaced, but it takes more than a statement that the marriage continued at a distance. The arrangement has to have been genuinely separate in fact, and recorded while it lasted. Where the family stays behind for a defined reason, such as a school year to finish or a house to sell, the sensible course is to expect factual residence for that period and budget for the Canadian filing rather than argue it afterwards.
What is the difference between factual resident and non-resident?
A factual resident is taxed by Canada as though they had never left: worldwide income on a Canadian return, with credit claimed for foreign tax paid on the same income. A non-resident is taxed only on Canadian-source income, often by withholding at source rather than by filing. The gap between those outcomes is wide, and nothing in between is available by choice. You do not elect which one applies. The label follows the facts of the year, and it can change part way through one. So the useful question is never which you would prefer, but what your records for that year actually show, and whether the other country would reach the same answer on the same facts.
Do I pay Canadian tax on foreign income as a factual resident?
Yes. A factual resident reports income from all sources, wherever earned and wherever the money stays: salary paid abroad, foreign rent, foreign interest, and gains on foreign assets. Relief for the other country's tax comes through a credit rather than an exemption, so the Canadian return has to be prepared before you can know what the year really costs. Two practical consequences follow. Foreign tax has to be substantiated with the foreign assessment rather than an estimate, so the order and timing of the two filings matter. And where the other country taxes on a different year end or a different basis, the credit rarely lines up neatly with the Canadian inclusion. That misalignment is where most of the work sits.
How does CRA decide if my ties to Canada continue?
On the record, and mostly on the record you made at the time. A review asks what was available to you rather than what you happened to use: whether a dwelling was there for you, where your household was, where your licences, coverage, cards and memberships pointed, and whether your pattern of travel matched the story you are telling. A determination can be requested in advance, which produces a written view on the facts you put forward. The alternative is to file on a position and defend it years later with reconstructed evidence, which is a much weaker place to stand. Keep the lease, the sale, the cancellation confirmations and the dates. They are the whole case.
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.
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.
