Does renting a warehouse abroad create a fixed place of business?
It can, and what decides it is the activity carried on there rather than the lease. The test has two parts: premises, equipment or a facility at the enterprise's disposal, and business carried on through it. A leased warehouse satisfies the first easily. Whether it satisfies the second depends on what happens inside. Storage and delivery of the enterprise's own goods is treated differently in many treaties from order processing, picking for customers, returns handling or after-sales work. So the question to answer is not whether you have space in that country but what your people and systems do with it.
What does at the enterprise's disposal actually mean?
That the enterprise can use the space for its own business as and when it needs to, not that it owns or leases it. A lease makes disposal obvious, but so does unrestricted practical access: a desk kept available in a group member's office, or a room at a customer's site that your technicians hold the key to. Conversely, a lease with nothing behind it may not help you either way, and occasional permitted visits to someone else's premises usually fall short. The question is one of practical control over the space, evidenced by how it is used day to day rather than by the paperwork alone.
Can equipment on its own be a fixed place of business?
Yes, because the definition names equipment and a facility alongside premises, and none of them requires staff. Unattended machinery, an installation or a facility that carries on part of the enterprise's business in a country can meet the test where it is at the enterprise's disposal. What still has to be shown is that the enterprise's business is being carried on through it, not merely that an asset is located there. An item leased out to a customer who uses it in its own business is a different case from one the owner operates itself to serve that market.
Does a co-working desk count as a fixed place of business?
It can, and the common assumption that flexible space avoids the question is unreliable. What matters is whether the space is in practice available to the enterprise and whether business is carried on from it, not the label on the contract or the absence of a conventional lease. A named desk used by your staff month after month looks materially like an office. Membership that permits occasional use of any location in a network, actually used a handful of times a year, looks like something else. Record which locations were used, how often, by whom and for what work, because that is what the answer turns on.
Our site keeps moving. Is it still fixed?
Possibly, because fixed refers to a link with a location rather than to immobility. Activities that move around within what is commercially and geographically one project are generally treated as a single place, so a rig working across one field or a crew progressing along one route does not restart the analysis each time it shifts. Unconnected activities in genuinely separate locations are separate cases. Two things to record: the boundaries of the project as the contract defines them, and the dates of presence, because both the coherence of the work and its duration feed into the conclusion.
Our employee works from home abroad. Is that our office?
Usually not, but the answer depends on who decided and who provided. Where an employer expects staff in that country to work from their own houses because it supplies no alternative, the house starts to look like space the enterprise uses for its business. Where an employee asks to work from home for personal convenience and could use an office if one existed, it generally does not. Also relevant is what is done there, since back-office work carried on at home is a weaker case than customer negotiation. Keep the policy, the correspondence agreeing the arrangement, and a description of the duties.
How much foreign income is tax-free in Canada?
None of it is tax-free for being foreign. A Canadian resident is taxed on worldwide income, so foreign salary, interest, dividends, rent and gains all go on the return, converted to Canadian dollars. What genuinely reduces the bill is the basic personal amount, the credit for foreign tax already paid, and any treaty article that exempts a specific type of income. The reporting thresholds people have in mind — the foreign property statement, for one — govern reporting, not exemption. See the foreign tax credit.
How many days can I spend in a country before I become tax resident?
It depends on the country, and a day count is only ever the start. Many use a threshold in a tax year, some also look at averages across several years, and some have no day test at all and decide on where your home and life are. Two countries can both conclude you are resident, which is what the treaty tie-breaker exists to settle. Counting days without checking the tie-breaker is how people end up filing as resident nowhere. See the residency tie-breaker.
