Hello,

I had a few questions with regards to selling my house in Canada. Hopefully some of the folks who have immigrated from Canada can assist me with my questions.

1. Can the take the proceeds of the money that I get after selling my house in Canada, to Australia without attracting any taxes. Will I have to pay capital gain tax etc? How can I take that amount to Oz? Bank Transfer after I get to Oz???

2. How much of fund can I take with me to Australia? Is there a limit for the cash and travellers checks that I can carry with me there?

3. Can I transfer my RRSPs over to Oz without attracting capital gains tax?

Thanks in advance!

Cheers!

Auzi

You can take the cash from your house sale to Australia if you wish. We did exactly that. Sold our house and used the proceeds to fund our move.

You can take as much money as you like with you. However, anything over $10k AUD cash will have to be declared to customs. It's just plain stupid to carry that much cash anyway, so shouldn't be a problem. We took our money and had it put into a bank cheque which we carried with us. My husband declared it on the arrival card, but customs didn't care.

Can't answer your last one as we cashed out our RRSP to buy our first house only a few years before we moved country. We only had a small amount in our fund, so cashed it out when we moved here. It might be a good idea to leave your RRSP in Canada if you have a decent amount of money in it where it's already collecting compound interest. When you retire you will still be able to access your pension as well as CPP and your Australian Super.

Hi Dorothy,
Thanks for the info you provided in your post. Especially about the import limit. Good to know. I guess I'm in a similar situation as you were. Using the proceeds of house sale to fund the move.
I got a question though, in your opinion, would it make sense to take the 10k allowed to Oz and leave the rest in Canada, but still accessible through my credit card?
Thanks for the RRSP advice too!

Auzi,
Hi fellow Canadian moving to Oz!
Great questions! Haven't given those things much thought yet, but I have to very soon.
Mind me asking where abouts in Canada you are and where abouts in Oz you are heading? I'm going from Oakville, ON to Perth

No problems selling your house. Just move the money over and put it towards whatever you want. The only problems I could see if you were selling an investment house, but if you only have the one house and were living in it then you're all right.

I would not use a bank to transfer your money. Nothing wrong with using them except you'll get a terrible exchange rate. We transfered over money twice with the bank. First time for $10,000 and second time for $30,000. We did get a slightly better rate the second time but it was still crap compared to the rate we got from Ozforex. The bank was also slow as well, both times it took a full week to get money over. When we moved the rest of the money from our house sale we used Ozforex and it only took about 1 day, 2 at the most.

We brought zero cash with us, not the best planning mind you! When we got into the airport in Sydney we went up to a currency exchange place and converted the $300 Canadian into Australian dollars. For the first few weeks we just used our credit cards. We had a relative back home tell us the amount of the bill and we just paid it through online banking.

Once we got a bank account here we transfered over two sums of money (as mentioned above). First, just for cash while we were travelling, then for a car. Once we were a bit more situated we transfered the remainder of our cash using Ozforex (highly recommend).

I would not recommend taking a bank cheque though. We brought a bank cheque from Canada and it took 6 weeks to clear. So not the best plan for immediate funds, unless there's another way to do it? Using a currency exchange place was incredibly fast. You just need to have a bank account set up in Oz before you do it.

As far as RRSP's you can leave them in Canada if you like. We know we're probably headed back eventually so we never looked into moving them. Just make sure you tell your bank in Canada that you will be a non-resident. As Dorothy said you will be able to access it later so no harm leaving it. To get the true ins and outs it's best to talk to an accountant before you leave.

I'm originally from Burlington and my husband is from Bronte. Small world, eh?

Your query about the 10K. You can bring up to 10,000 in CASH into Australia before you have to declare it. That's not to say you can't bring 10,000,000 if that's what you want. We found that about $1000 cash for the initial couple of weeks was about right. We were fortunate that we had furnished accom. set up before we arrived, so all we needed was groceries and a few other things.

Our bank cheque took 4 weeks to clear, but like Comet we used our credit cards for anything we didn't have the cash for. My sister in law was our power of attorney, so she just paid the bill from our account over there. Once the money we brought came through we had her close the TD account and send us what was left over. Easy peasy.

Like Dorothy we gave my mother-in-law authority to do anything she needed to with regards to our banking and mail. That way she could move money around or close or cancel things after we left. It made things so much easier.

The question would be though, why would you bother? Bringing that much cash, apart from the personal security aspect, you would have Customs and the AFP zero in on you like an Exocet missile.

They can always watch for themselves on the next episode of Border Security.

Actually, NO if it's worth more than AU$50k - from a Canadian tax law perspective, yes you could leave it - but under Australian tax law, if you leave RSPs in Canada, you become subject to their FIF laws after six months, which could cause cash flow problems when the stock market is rising (not a problem right now obviously).

Best strategy is immediately (i.e. within six months) after you tell your bank in Canada you're a non-resident (and tax resident of Australia), withdraw the money at that point and you pay a 15% withholding tax under the Canada-Australia tax treaty. There will be no tax obligations on the Aussie side if done in this time period. 15% is still far less than what you would pay if you were a resident of Canada and withdrawing (taxed at your marginal tax rate).

(note that if you research FIF after reading this, you'll see a lot of references to British pensions and their requirement to transfer it directly into Australian superannuation under UK tax law - personal Canadian RSPs have no such obligation, you can take the money directly.
If you have a locked-in RSP (LIRA) from an old job, there are various laws where you can shut it down after you become a non-resident but its dependent on the jurisdiction (province/fed) that governs your LIRA)