We pleased to welcome you as a New Client. The following will give you the information we will need to prepare your personal tax return. Follow through the information and forms and contact us at 416-663-5032 if you have any questions.
- Start by becoming familiar with the important dates for Individual taxpayers in Canada.
- Please complete this Tax Return checklist and bring it to our office.
- You can read our Terms of Engagement and our personal Letter of Engagement which details our role as your representative on income tax matters with the CRA.
- Learn how to complete the CRA Consent to authorize us as your representative with the CRA.
- Learn about the fees we charge for various services.
If you are a US Taxpayer
For US tax returns, some additional information is required, such as social security numbers, time spent in the USA, and many other items. You may have to file a US tax return if you are considered to be a ‘US person‘, or if you have income from US sources.
If you are what is called a ‘US person’, and you have over $10,000 in aggregate in non-US bank and financial accounts and investments, you need to do ‘FBAR‘ reporting on form 114. As such, I will need a listing with the maximum value in all your bank and financial accounts during the year, including RRSP’s and TFSA’s.
Complete this US Return checklist.
It is normally fine for you as a ‘US person’ to contribute to a Tax Free Savings Account. However, our recommendation is to not invest in Canadian mutual funds and Exchange Transfer Funds if possible, as they are normally considered by the IRS to be passive foreign investment companies (PFIC), which have special reporting requirements on form 8621.
If you are a Canadian resident and are paying tax to the IRS, in order to claim a foreign tax credit on your Canadian return, CRA will usually require you to request a ‘Record of Account Transcript’ (Assessment Notice) from the IRS. Please follow the directions here.
If you are not an American citizen or green card holder, but spend a lot of time in the USA, you can be considered a non-resident alien required to file a US tax return. To establish a closer connection to Canada, and as such be exempt from US taxation, you should file form 8840. You can read more about this here.
If you are an expat and not in compliance with the IRS, you may wish to take advantage of the voluntary disclosure rules by using ‘streamlined filing procedures’, which you can find here. I can prepare those returns for you.
