Possibly on record for not being "Common law", despite actually being so for 3 years

[Dellace]

You really need to check if your partner has changed his tax status. If not and he has himself listed as single, recommend he change his status asap and refile his past tax returns where he should have declared himself common law. This is a key piece of evidence that IRCC considers when confirming you are common law.

Hey, it turns out he hasn't listed me as common law on tax returns because the check box refused to let him proceed without a "SIN" number. I don't have one.. The severity of the error didn't really register to either of us,but now it's a new issue!

Will they take this fact into account? How can he re-file his last tax return so that it includes a non-Canadian common law with no Canadian "SIN"? He says he will be making a call to have them fix this. Hopefully this doesn't cause problems

 

[canuck_in_uk]

Hey, it turns out he hasn't listed me as common law on tax returns because the check box refused to let him proceed without a "SIN" number. I don't have one.. The severity of the error didn't really register to either of us,but now it's a new issue!

Will they take this fact into account? How can he re-file his last tax return so that it includes a non-Canadian common law with no Canadian "SIN"? He says he will be making a call to have them fix this. Hopefully this doesn't cause problems

If I recall, he just needs to put all zeroes for your SIN. Note that he needs to re-file all years from the one year anniversary of living together, i.e. if you hit one year of living together in 2016, he needs to re-file 2016 and 2017.

 

[scylla]

Hey, it turns out he hasn't listed me as common law on tax returns because the check box refused to let him proceed without a "SIN" number. I don't have one.. The severity of the error didn't really register to either of us,but now it's a new issue!

Will they take this fact into account? How can he re-file his last tax return so that it includes a non-Canadian common law with no Canadian "SIN"? He says he will be making a call to have them fix this. Hopefully this doesn't cause problems

Per the response above, you can certainly file as common law even if your partner doesn't have a SIN. I would personally proceed with filing the application, show evidence that you've changed his status with CRA and then state in the application that he will be refiling his taxes for the years that were filed incorrectly.