Vaseepoo

Hi All,

We have made the decision one year post move back to the UK to sell our house in Canada.
We have been informed by our accountant we need to apply for a Non Resident Tax Clearance Certificate from the CRA prior to being allowed to move any proceeds from the sale out of the country.

Has anyone done this before, and if so how long did it take to obtain their certificate?

The CRA website is staying up to 6 months processing time once they receive the application, so just wondering if there were any real life examples of timelines people had experienced they could share.

Thank you in advance!
KR.

Twitcher1958

I’m intrigued by this. Everything I’ve read to date suggests that it’s sensible to sell your house before leaving Canada and people are advised strongly to remain in Canada until the house has closed. I assumed that advice was to prevent this type of situation so I’ll be interested to see what others have to say.

Vaseepoo

Hi,

Oh interesting.
We haven’t really found owing from abroad to be too much of an issue. The delay in moving the money whilst we wait for the certificate isn’t a huge problem that I can see. They just want to confirm we aren’t running away from a huge tax debt I suspect.
We don’t have to pay a penalty or a higher tax, and all property management and repair costs are still tax write offs when we do our annual Turbo Tax assessment. Granted we do the withholding tax on the rental income but we get it all back with our refund and the property management company takes care of all that so we don’t event think about it.
Hope we aren’t missing something else!!

bats

We just sold and moved the day after completion. I have learned that you can't file electronically after leaving Canada., Its a different form and there's an online form about establishing non residency. I'm no good at remembering numbers, sorry.

Vaseepoo

That’s interesting!
We actually paid $500 for an account to do all our taxes for the year through the property management company. Not that much money it seems versus the complications others have mentioned doing their own taxes and the overall process seems to be when you have left.

I think the learnings are if you chose to leave assets in country after you leave Canada having a professional property management company and accountant seems key. Also setting expectations that receiving proceeds will be a slow process.

Next step will be understanding how to transfer the money once it has cleared!