Foreign tax credit limit calculator
Work out how much foreign tax is creditable this year and how much carries forward.
Open itThe year you arrive or leave is two tax positions in one calendar. This splits it at the date, allocates income across the two parts, taxes each on its own basis and shows what the split saved against a full year of residence.
Use 366 for a leap year, or the length of a short period if the year is not a full one.
Count from arrival to year end, or from year start to the day residence ended.
Salary and other income that accrues day by day. Put one-off items in the field below instead.
Only the income this country can tax while you are not resident — local rent, local employment days, local dividends.
Your blended rate on the resident-period income, not your top marginal rate.
Often a flat withholding rate. Use the treaty rate where you are claiming one.
Tax across both parts
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Effective rate on what this country taxes —
In the resident part of the year the country taxes your worldwide income. In the non-resident part it taxes only what arises within its own borders. The split is not a discount — it is two different tax bases applied to two different stretches of the same twelve months.
That is why the calculator asks for the source-country income in the non-resident part separately. Income that accrues abroad after you leave is simply outside the net, and the readout names that figure so you can see what the change of status actually removed.
Pro-rating by days is right for income that genuinely accrues evenly: a salary, a rent, an interest coupon. It is wrong for anything that happened on a date. A bonus paid for a period worked wholly before you left belongs to the earlier period however the payroll dated it; a capital gain belongs to the day of disposal; a share vesting is allocated over its own vesting period, not over the tax year.
So put the even income in the main field and handle the dated items separately. Where a departure triggers a deemed disposition or an exit charge, that is a distinct computation and not part of this allocation at all.
Worked example
A consultant leaves Canada for Dubai on day 200 of a 365-day year. Salary for the year is 120,000, accrued evenly. She keeps a Canadian rental producing 8,000 in the remaining 165 days.
Note what the split does not do: it does not remove the departure-year deemed disposition, and it does not decide the date. The date is a question of fact about ties.
An estimate, not advice. This is an estimate built from what you typed, not advice on your file. Nothing here reads your documents, checks your treaty article or looks at the year you are actually in. Where the number matters, we agree a fixed fee in writing before any work starts.
Any figure prefilled in the panel above is stated with the year it belongs to and can be changed. Rates and thresholds move; a calculator that asks you for the current one stays right, and one that hides a guess does not.
Functions, assets and risks decide which entity should earn the return, and the method follows from that rather than the other way round. Getting the sequence backwards is how a study fails on its first question.
Read how this one runsThe two statuses attract different returns, different credits and different provincial treatment, and the label is decided by facts rather than chosen. Establishing which applies is the work; the filing follows from it without argument.
Read how this one runsEmployment carried out in Canada is taxable here even where the employer and the bank account are not. The engagement establishes how many of the days were worked in Canada, applies the treaty employment article, and deals with the withholding the payer has already taken.
Read how this one runsThe arrival date splits the year and sets the cost base of what you brought with you. Getting that date and those values right is what determines whether a later sale is taxed on the whole gain or only on the part that accrued after landing.
Read how this one runsA cross-border return prepared on one side only is usually right in isolation and wrong in combination. The review checks residence, source and relief in that order, and says plainly whether an amendment is worth making.
Read how this one runsA totalization agreement assigns contributions to one system and exempts the other, but only against a certificate obtained in advance. Without it both sets come out of the same salary and neither is straightforward to recover.
Read how this one runsAn interest-free loan between related companies is priced as if it carried interest, and in some cases a deemed benefit follows as well. The file sets a rate against the borrower's own credit profile and documents the terms that support it.
Read how this one runsUS situs assets sit inside the US estate tax net regardless of where the owner lived, and the exemption available to a non-resident is not the resident one. The file establishes situs asset by asset before any relief is claimed.
Read how this one runsAll case studies — every published engagement in one place.
Strategy and compliance for income, assets and families spread across borders.
Firms and partners working across borders meet Regulation 105 withholding, PE risk on long engagements and per-country payroll for travelling staff.
A partnership is taxed in the hands of its partners, so one engagement abroad can reach every partner's personal return. The order matters: the waiver is applied for before the invoice, the presence is tracked before it becomes an establishment, and the payroll is registered before the first day worked in the other country.
Work out how much foreign tax is creditable this year and how much carries forward.
Open itSee which country taxes an item of income first and where the credit is claimed.
Open itFollow corporate profit through every tax layer to the cash that reaches you.
Open itHow this desk handles the work behind the numbers, at a fixed fee agreed before it starts.
Read the pageHow this desk handles the work behind the numbers, at a fixed fee agreed before it starts.
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