Treaty relief on RRSP / 401(k) / IRA — value-priced, fixed fee

Some of it, yes — and we will say so on the call if that is the honest answer. The parts that are worth paying for are the ones where a missed election, a missed deadline or an unverified threshold costs more than the fee: the protection depends on the specific plan qualifying under the treaty, on an election or filing in some cases, and on how withdrawals are characterised.

That is a common starting point. We re-derive the position, identify whether an amendment or a disclosure route is the right vehicle, and tell you which one preserves the relief that is still available. The order matters more than the speed.

It depends on the documents rather than on us. Once the pack is complete most filings turn around inside a fortnight; anything that needs a certificate from a tax authority runs on that authority's timetable, which we tell you at the start rather than at the end.

Not where the plan qualifies for treaty protection. The treaty's purpose here is to preserve the deferral the plan was built on, so income accumulating inside a qualifying plan is not taxed year by year in the country you have moved to. That protection is not automatic in every case. It depends on the plan itself meeting the treaty's description, and in some cases on an election or a filing being made, and it does not decide how a withdrawal will be taxed when you eventually take one. Those are three separate questions and the answer to one does not settle the others.

A transfer between plans in two different countries is a different question from the one the deferral rules answer, and it has a different answer. Protecting the growth inside a plan you already hold says nothing about whether the balance can be moved across the border, what the movement is treated as in each country, or what is withheld when the money leaves. Look at it as a transaction in its own right before you instruct anyone, because the order in which the steps happen often matters more than the paperwork. We set out the treatment in each country first, and only then advise whether the move is worth making.

It may be, but the account has to be tested rather than assumed. The treaty protects plans that answer to a particular description, and retirement accounts differ in ways that matter to that description even when they look alike from the outside. An employer plan, a personal account and a plan opened by a predecessor employer can each land in a different place. The practical step is to identify precisely what the account is under the law where it was opened, confirm whether that plan falls inside the treaty's wording, and then deal with any election or filing the protection depends on.

For some plans in some situations it follows from the treaty without anything further being done. For others it depends on an election or a filing, and the protection can be lost simply because nobody made it. This is the part people are most often caught by, because nothing about the account changes when a filing is missed and the consequence only appears years later. The safe approach is to establish which category your plan sits in during the first year you are resident in the new country, so the position is claimed in time rather than reconstructed afterwards.

Very often, yes. How a withdrawal is characterised drives the outcome, and the treaty does not always treat a single large payment the same way as a stream of periodic payments from the same plan. That means the shape of the withdrawal is a decision with a tax consequence attached, and it is a decision you still control before the money moves. Ask the question before you instruct the plan administrator, not after the statement arrives. Once the payment has been made and reported, the characterisation has effectively been chosen for you and you are arguing about it rather than planning it.

Possibly. The treaty does not work from the brand name of a plan; it works from what the plan is under the law of the country where it was established. Plans that are not the familiar ones still qualify regularly, and plans that look familiar sometimes do not. What settles it is the plan's own governing documents and its status under domestic law, read against the treaty wording. Where the plan turns out to fall outside that wording, the position is not hopeless but it changes: the analysis moves to how the income is taxed in each country and whether relief comes from another route.

For the main registered and qualified plans on both sides, yes — the treaty defers tax on income accruing inside the plan until it is actually distributed, which is what stops a US person's RRSP or a Canadian resident's 401k being taxed annually on gains nobody has received. The relief is not automatic in every case: it depends on the plan qualifying as a pension for treaty purposes, and some positions still need an election or a disclosure on the return. Plans that fall outside the definition are exactly where cross-border double taxation shows up.

It is the provision that lets each country keep taxing its own residents and citizens as though the treaty did not exist. Because the United States taxes on citizenship, the saving clause is what stops an American in Canada or India using the treaty to remove US tax on ordinary income. A short list of articles is carved out of it — certain pensions, social security, government service, students — and those exceptions are where a treaty position for a US citizen usually lives. See our treaty work.