Meeting physical presence requirement as a non-resident

[SeniorStakes]

I live in Niagara Falls and have been living here for the last 2 years and 10 months as a PR since I immigrated to Canada. I will complete my 3-year physical presence requirement on January 20, 2025. However, I received a job offer from the USA with a start date of January 6, 2025. I will leave my current employment in Canada on December 25, 2024. My wife, a Canadian citizen, has been working in the US and commuting daily across the border for a few months. Since I am based in Canada, she has been paying taxes in Canada while I am working here. However, we plan to both declare ourselves as emigrants from December 25, 2024, and attain non-resident status starting December 26, 2024. My wife has rented a home in the US across the border, so we will be spending more time there moving forward.

My question is, in order to meet the physical presence requirement of 3 years, I plan to visit Canada daily and stay overnight for 20 days from Dec 25 onwards. At the same time, I will be declaring myself as a non-resident to the CRA for that duration. Is this acceptable? Will my non-resident days count towards the physical presence requirement? The reason we want to declare ourselves as non-residents is that we don't want to continue filing dual taxes next year and want to simplify things for the upcoming year. We plan to relocate completely yo the US after Jan 20, 2025 so it's just a matter of 20-25 days which I wish to be considered for physical presence despite non resident status post emigrantion.

 

[Seym]

CRA status and physical presence requirement are completely separate. This shouldn't be an issue at all.
The one thing you should keep in mind is that applying with minimal or no buffer above 1095 days can result in longer processing delays or even rejection if you happen to have forgotten a travel that would put you under 1095. You can easily find examples of people regretting doing so in this forum. If you can, keep crossing the border a week or 2 after January 20, that annoyance may mean you get your citizenship significantly earlier than if you apply right when you can. Obviously, you'll find people who got their citizenship in 3 months after applying on the 1096th day, your call really, but if you wanna minimize risk...
Also, you need to maintain PR as long as you're not a citizen, but the PR residency requirement would only become a problem in case of a very long processing, no need to worry about it for now.

 

[SeniorStakes]

CRA status and physical presence requirement are completely separate. This shouldn't be an issue at all.
The one thing you should keep in mind is that applying with minimal or no buffer above 1095 days can result in longer processing delays or even rejection if you happen to have forgotten a travel that would put you under 1095. You can easily find examples of people regretting doing so in this forum. If you can, keep crossing the border a week or 2 after January 20, that annoyance may mean you get your citizenship significantly earlier than if you apply right when you can. Obviously, you'll find people who got their citizenship in 3 months after applying on the 1096th day, your call really, but if you wanna minimize risk...
Also, you need to maintain PR as long as you're not a citizen, but the PR residency requirement would only become a problem in case of a very long processing, no need to worry about it for now.

Thanks for the detailed response. As my wife is a Canadian citizen, I won't ever lose the PR status until she remains a citizen. I plan to relocate to Connecticut on Jan 20 and won't be feasible for me to come again. I can push this Jan 20 date to Jan 31 at most.

 

[Seym]

True for the PR residency, so please forget the last paragraph
As for the physical presence, your 1st post suggest applying on January 20 would be with no buffer at all. If you decide to do so and don't really care how long the processing would take, please double and triple check your trips outside Canada to make sure you didn't forget any that would jeopardize your application, but that's all there is to it, if you qualify for citizenship, you'll end up getting it at some point.
Good luck.