Common Law Status

[sdjm]

Hi,

My girlfriend and I live together since 2015 and we started to file tax together as common-law partner since 2017, because our tax consultant said we can use each other's tax credit in this way. However, we still apply for study permit extension using 'single' (in 2019 and 2020 Feb) because we thought we did not do the commissioning of oaths. Recently we realized that this information (marital status) conflicting between CRA and CIC might cause serious problems.

I'm graduating in August and planning to apply for the post-graduate work permit, and we want to fill the martial status with common-law. We are worried about being categorized by 'Misrepresentation' by IIRC. What is the best way for us to fix this conflicting status? Since we are not intended to mislead the officer to get the benefit (we are not trying to use single or common-law status to get any benefit for applying for study permit extension or pgwp), what the most serious outcome in this case?

Thank you very much for helping!

 

[canuck78]

Hi,

My girlfriend and I live together since 2015 and we started to file tax together as common-law partner since 2017, because our tax consultant said we can use each other's tax credit in this way. However, we still apply for study permit extension using 'single' (in 2019 and 2020 Feb) because we thought we did not do the commissioning of oaths. Recently we realized that this information (marital status) conflicting between CRA and CIC might cause serious problems.

I'm graduating in August and planning to apply for the post-graduate work permit, and we want to fill the martial status with common-law. We are worried about being categorized by 'Misrepresentation' by IIRC. What is the best way for us to fix this conflicting status? Since we are not intended to mislead the officer to get the benefit (we are not trying to use single or common-law status to get any benefit for applying for study permit extension or pgwp), what the most serious outcome in this case?

Thank you very much for helping!

Worst case scenario is that you could be denied the ability to include each other as common law during that time period. That is far from guaranteed but you misleading CIC will raise red flags and the agent may question what else you are not being honest about. You knew you were common law on you taxes so it is misleading to say you were both single when applying for extensions. You should both be sending in webforms correcting your errors.