What makes business owners & founders different from an ordinary filing?
A founder's personal residency and their company's residency are separate questions, and moving one without the other is what creates the most expensive surprises at exit. An ordinary preparer applies the general rule and stops there, which is how the relief in the specific provision goes unclaimed.
Can you work with my existing accountant?
That is how most of these engagements run. They keep the domestic file, we take the cross-border piece, and the boundary is agreed in writing so nothing is done twice or missed.
I moved abroad but my company is still in Canada — what changes?
Two separate tests, and only one of them followed you. Your own residency turns on where your life is centred: home, family, the ties you kept and the ties you cut. The company's residency turns on where it was incorporated and, separately, on where the people who actually direct it take their decisions. Moving yourself does not move the company. But if you are the only director and every decision is now taken abroad, the company's central management may be treated as having travelled with you, which can leave it resident in both countries at once. The treaty tie-breaker then decides. That answer affects withholding on dividends to you, the company's filing obligations, and how a future sale is taxed.
Does leaving the country trigger a tax on my private company shares?
It can. Many systems treat emigration as a deemed sale of what you own on the day residence ceases, at market value, with tax on the gain even though nothing was sold and no cash arrived. Private company shares are the hardest part of that calculation: they have to be valued, and a founder's holding is usually the largest figure on the return. Some classes of asset are excluded, and some regimes let you post security and defer payment until an actual sale rather than paying on the way out. The planning window closes on your departure date, so the valuation and the elections belong before that date, not when the return falls due.
Where is my company resident if I run it from another country?
Incorporation is only half the answer. Most systems also ask where the company is really directed from — where the board genuinely meets, where the decisions that matter are made, where the person making them is sitting. In a founder-run company those all sit wherever the founder is. So a company incorporated in one country and run day to day from a kitchen table in another can be resident in both. A treaty will usually resolve the conflict, but the resolution is not automatic: it has to be claimed, and it needs evidence about how the company is actually governed. Board minutes, where resolutions are signed, who holds signing authority — dull records that settle an expensive question.
Will my sale qualify for exit relief if I have already emigrated?
Check the conditions before you find out at closing. Exit reliefs are conditional, and the conditions are tested at a fixed point — commonly the closing date, sometimes a period ending on it. Residency, who owns the shares, how long they have been held, what the company's assets consist of and what proportion of them are used in an active business all tend to appear somewhere in the test. A founder who has moved may fail the residency limb with everything else in order. A company that has accumulated cash or investments may fail the asset limb without anyone noticing. Both are visible years ahead and both can often be corrected before a sale process begins.
Do I need to tell the tax authority before I leave or after?
Usually after, but the preparation belongs before. There is generally no permission to seek in advance; the obligation is a return for the year of departure, carrying the departure date, the deemed disposition and any elections. The difficulty is that several of those elections are available only on that return and cannot be added later, and they depend on a valuation as at the departure date — far easier to obtain at the time than three years afterwards from memory and a set of accounts. Treat the move as the filing event it is: fix the date, record the position at that date, then file. The order is what makes it defensible.
Can I keep my holding company where it is after I move?
Usually yes, though the consequences change. The company keeps its incorporation and its local filings. What alters is who is directing it, how dividends to you are taxed and withheld now that you are a non-resident, and whether the company has picked up a second residency or a taxable presence where you now live. There is a further question worth asking: whether the structure still does anything. A holding company built for one country's rules may serve no purpose under another's while still costing two sets of compliance. The time to test that is before the move, because unwinding a holding company afterwards can itself be a taxable event.
Branch or subsidiary — which should we use to expand?
A branch keeps one taxpayer: results consolidate at home, losses are usable sooner, and the exposure is that the branch is a permanent establishment whose profit the host country taxes, sometimes with a branch tax on repatriation. A subsidiary is a separate taxpayer with limited liability and local rates, at the cost of withholding on dividends home and transfer pricing on everything between them. The deciding facts are usually expected losses, liability and exit plans. See branch against subsidiary.
How does the treaty tie-breaker work when both countries say I am resident?
As a sequence, stopping at the first test that gives an answer: where you have a permanent home available; if in both or neither, where your centre of vital interests is; then habitual abode; then nationality; and if all of those tie, the two tax authorities decide by agreement. It is evidential rather than elective — you do not choose your treaty residence, you demonstrate it, which makes the record of homes, family and time the substance of the claim. See tie-breaking dual residency.
