Citizenship application eligibility - from an income tax filing perspective
- Thread starter dtr45
- Start date
How were you a non-resident if you lived in Canada for 11 months? You likely have H1B? How are you being paid. That makes a huge difference in terms of how you pay your taxes. Is your employer indicating that you live in the US? Do you drive across the border and work in the US daily. If you don’t drive across the border to work in the US is your employer aware that you work from Canada? Are you self-employed? Other pay,ent option?
Did you do your taxes of did a CPA who specializes in cross border taxes file them? If you lived in Canada for 11 months you were a resident and need to correct that. In terms of your US income there is a tax treaty which means you pay US taxes first and then the difference between Canadian tax rate minus US tax rate goes to Canada. You can still be a Canadian resisdent while working for a U.S. company.
I think it is possible as between US Canada tiebreaker clause, substantial residential ties determine residency status. If he has primary home, family in US, he may be considered US resident. But I am not sure if non resident is right, most likely deemed resident.
Having said that, ircc is not responsible for decoding tax law and enforcement, that is gor cra to do. All they care about is tax filing which he seems to be in compliance.
Income (or its source) is not the criterion for citizenship - physical presence in Canada is. So if you spent nights in Canada those will count towards your physical presence. Whether you were treated as resident of US for tax purposes is irrelevant in this case.
Here's the portion of text from IRCC tax filing requirements for citizenship. With this in mind, years you didn't file tax returns also count:-
Note: Ordinarily, meeting tax filing obligations (option 1) means that the applicant has filed tax returns, though there may be instances where they did not file in a given year because they were not required to do so under the Income Tax Act (e.g., they did not meet the minimum income threshold). If they have a SIN or alternate identifier and did not file taxes because they were not required to do so, they still meet the income tax filing requirement for citizenship.
Note: Ordinarily, meeting tax filing obligations (option 1) means that the applicant has filed tax returns, though there may be instances where they did not file in a given year because they were not required to do so under the Income Tax Act (e.g., they did not meet the minimum income threshold). If they have a SIN or alternate identifier and did not file taxes because they were not required to do so, they still meet the income tax filing requirement for citizenship.
I think you should be good, as long as you are compliant with tax rules. Resident, non resident tax filing doesn't matter as long as you filed.
To be eligible to apply for Canadian citizenship, you must have been physically present in Canada for at least three out of the Five years preceding your application and other stuff, but to be honest It does not matter whether you filed your taxes as a resident or a non-resident during that time.
Good luck
