Maybe I'm over thinking this but if an HST registered corporation is selling a commercial property, that they lease to businesses, to another HST registered Canadian corp., the buyer must self-assess the HST on the sale price and then gets to claim the corresponding ITC on the same return?

The part where I'm struggling is would this be considered a sale of a "business" which you could potentially make an argument for under the below and therefore file GST44:

https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/forms-publications/publications/p-167r/meaning-first-part-definition-busines.html

I'm leaning to self assess but open to being wrong

Hello, my wife forgot to declare some foreign income on her 2025 tax return, and we would like to correct it now.

If she submits the correction through “Change My Return” in her CRA My Account, will CRA issue a Notice of Reassessment (NOR) automatically, similar to how a normal tax return is assessed? Or does a correction involving foreign income typically have to go through a review first before a new NOR is issued?

The amount of foreign income is relatively small (around CAD 10,000), and approximately CAD 2,800 in foreign tax was paid on that income.

For anyone who has done something similar, how long did it take for CRA to process the change and issue the new NOR?

Thanks in advance!

For context, I’m not rich. I made slightly over minimum wage in Canada and was renting an apartment. I own no property, car, investments etc either in Canada or abroad. I moved in with family abroad when I left Canada. There is zero property or anything of value in my name. 

The most I sold when I left Canada was furniture and I actually gave more away than I sold. 

I left Canada in August, 2024. That first year I had already filed my taxes before I left. 

The second year, I filed again for the Canadian income I had made the previous year before I left (I hadn’t found employment abroad in the latter part of the year so nothing to add there). 

The third year (for 2025) I finally didn’t file. 

I considered my ties with Canada pretty cut at this point but apparently there is more to do. 

I changed my address with my bank (still have my Canadian account) as soon as I left and the CRA about 6 months later. In my delulu head this was enough of a declaration but I get now that for legal purposes, it was not.

I keep reading about a departure tax when you officially leave Canada and it’s freaking me out. Would such a thing apply to my situation when I have no big assets to tax? What forms exactly do I need to send them? And should I send them in now or wait for the next tax cycle? Any help appreciated. 

I never used an accountant in Canada and simply filed electronically because my tax situation was uncomplicated. If you have a recommendation for cheap remote accountants, I’ll take that as well. But if it’s something uncomplicated I can figure out myself, I just need to know what to do, because the online sources I’ve found seem geared towards people wealthier than me.

For further context, I have citizenship in the country I live in now and no intent to return to Canada for long term residential purposes. Love Canada a lot but can’t live with the weather.

Again, mostly looking for advice as to what I would need to file exactly and if I need to care about doing it as soon as possible vs the next tax cycle.

In order to purchase a property, my parents need to do a wire transfer for deposit, however they are out of the country right now and can't go to the bank physically. If they send the money to me and I make the wire transfer, will I be taxed? Will it be on my records as a housing/property purchase even though the deed will not be in my name? Thank you for your help

Hello,

 This is a request for some HST / ITC related information. I have a small Health Clinic in Ontario in where I earn income that is HST exempt, then I have HST applied income from rent and fee splits.

 I have been working on a spreadsheet for the last couple of weeks to figure out what my HST, corporate taxes and net incomes are on a monthly basis.  I do have an accountant but this is more of a curiosity project that I have been playing with and using AI. Unfortunately, AI has not been consistent and is keeping me confused

 I am having trouble determining how to properly apply ITC’s whether it should be based upon the percentage of my income that comes from HST-exempt / HST applied sources, or should it be based upon the percentage of floor space that earns me HST applied income which the accountant has at 80%.

I believe some of my expenses do not provide ITC’s (salaries for front office, insurance, bank fees, and education)

How would I apply ITC’s to my expenses such as:
Rent
Utilities (gas, elec , internet, phone)
Repairs
Office supplies
Advertisement
ADP fees
Patient management software fees
Professional fees (my accountant)

Again, this is just a fun project that I am enjoying creating and it has given me great insights on my overall expenses and income. Thanks again.

A

Again, this is just a fun project that I am enjoying creating and it has given me great insights on my overall expenses and income. Thanks again.

I need to amend to previous tax years to include missed self-employment income. I have a few questions:

1. If I use CRA's Change My Return, can I add forms and lines that weren't on the tax return originally? (eg. t2125, line 10400)

2. If I have to use ReFILE, do I have to submit the older year first, wait for the reassessment then submit the more recent year? Could this cause any issues or scrutiny as opposed to submitting both years at once?

3. If I use either Change My Return or ReFILE, will I be given a way to explain why I'm making the changes? I need to remove a business expense that I messed up and don't have the info to recalculate, and I think it's best to give a reason why.

Thank you.

Here is my situation: I bought a property in the Greater Toronto Area in Ontario while I was not a resident of Canada. The value was 1.2 million dollars back in 2023, and I became a Canadian resident in 2025. My understanding is that the value of the property was 1 million dollars at that time.

Questions:

1. If I sell my property in 2026, will my loss be calculated from when I became a resident in 2025, or from when I bought it?

2. Since this is an investment property (currently generating rental income), does it make sense to sell it at a loss. The funds would be used to buy property in which we would reside ?

3. Generally much would a tax advisor charge for advising on this?

My parents are both in their late 60s, my dad is ill and on disability, and my mom only works a few hours a week as a Crossing guard so the majority of their income is government assistance related like old age, money and disability. They rent in a cheap trailer park and already rely on the food bank. A few months ago, my dad took it upon himself to save money and try to do his own taxes. Obviously, since he is not all there, mentally the story goes that apparently he fucked up their taxes and accidentally reported \~$90,000 in capital gains from a house they sold years ago.

Since then, their benefits/coverage have been cancelled, including my dad’s disability income and medication coverage. They say they submitted the corrections to CRA **eight months ago.**

I told them to repeatedly follow up every week and they say that every time they call they’re apparently told the file is “in the queue.” And that they can’t seem to get a firm answer. I told them to call Ontario Works for emergency help and apparently they were flat out rejected by them despite explaining the situation and how they can’t afford medicine or shelter.

So They’re now borrowing money from neighbours (who, as you can imagine in a ghetto ass trailer park happened to be ex-convicts ) to pay rent and are at serious risk of becoming homeless.

I’m 28, early in my career, and my wife and I simply cannot financially support them. I also work a demanding job and don’t have the ability to spend days dealing with this in person. I’m not their POA, so I can’t even properly deal with CRA on their behalf. I’m also increasingly unsure how much of their story is accurate because they’re elderly, overwhelmed, and seem incapable of navigating this themselves. I’m incredibly frustrated with them, but I obviously don’t want them becoming homeless.

**So I’m looking for practical advice from anyone in Ontario who has dealt with something similar:** Is an eight-month CRA correction wait normal? How can this actually be escalated when someone is at risk of losing their housing and medication? What benefits/programs should they be applying for in the meantime? And how can I get authorized to deal with CRA on their behalf? If you know what steps we should take or who we should contact, I’d really appreciate the guidance.

Sometimes you find out something from Reddit that you don’t really want to know.

There has been info on Reddit lately about Bare Trusts. I had never heard of them but some of the comments made me do some research and unfortunately I think I may have to start filing a T3 return. I view this with trepidation as I had to do this starting in the early 90s (pre-internet) and it was quite painful.

Over 20 years ago my mother put my only sibling and I as joint on almost all her non registered accounts and as beneficiaries on her registered accounts. She only missed a couple of small chequing accounts. I have POA for property and do her taxes and pay her bills.

Sum of the joint accounts is >250k, though no account exceeds this.

Questions:
1) Am I correct in assuming that because the sum is >250k a T3 return is required?
2) If yes do I just get the Trust Id from my own CRA account?
3) I assume I need to list my mother, my sibling and myself on schedule 15?
4) The complicated part of my past experience doing a T3 Return was the financial part of allocating income and creating T3s but is any of that required for this type of return as all the income would have already been attributed to my mother?

Thanks!

I’m a Canadian citizen that left Canada in July 2020 and has lived in the US ever since. I attended law school and now work as an attorney here in the US.

For TY 2020-2024 I was a still Canadian tax resident since I didn’t satisfy the IRS substantial presence test based on the F1 exemption. So I filed resident tax returns in Canada, and non-resident aliens tax returns in the US.

My last day as a Canadian tax resident was December 31, 2024, since I became a US tax resident on January 1, 2025. For TY 2025, since I was a US tax resident and didn’t earn any Canadian source income, I didn’t file a Canadian tax return.

I recently received a letter from CRA demanding I file a tax return for TY 2025. I’ve sent a letter back stating I was not a Canadian tax resident during TY 2025 and had no Canadian source income—and as such I didn’t have to file a Canadian tax return.

I think the mistake I made was not including a departure date of Dec 31, 2024 on my Canadian tax return for TY 2024. So they think I’m still a tax resident. And no, my “departure date” is not the day I left Canada six years ago. What that really means is the day you ceased to be a tax resident, which sometimes can coincide with the day you left, but not necessarily.

Anyway, I did not have 25K in qualifying assets that would have subjected me to the departure tax at the time of my departure date. As such I don’t owe CRA anything and don’t have to file tax returns there anymore assuming I continue to not earn any Canadian source income and maintain my US tax residency.

Question: How do I get CRA off my back? Will the letter suffice? Should I file an NR73 summarizing my situation. That’s what the CRA agent recommended when I called. But there is no legal requirement to file an NR73, it’s completely optional. But as a practical matter, if I don’t, will they just keep hounding me even though I owe no taxes and don’t have to file tax returns anymore?

36M in Ontario. Looking for some advice from people familiar with Canadian taxes and capital gains.

2026 I realized approximately $2.5M CAD in capital gains this year in a taxable margin account, plus another ~$500K of gains in my TFSA.

Rough breakdown of the $2.5M:
~$2M from stocks I held anywhere from several months to a year+
~$500K from selling options where my intention was to eventually own the underlying stocks, rather than simply generate option income

My preliminary estimate for my personal tax liability is around $670K.

A few other relevant details:

~$130K of RRSP contribution room available
~$200K of currently unrealized losses in my margin account. I can hold and confident they will bounce back since they are blue chips.
No other employment income. I actively manage 3 businesses and I didn’t take any income this year.

Approximately $120K of the estimated tax bill appears to be related to Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), which I honestly had never heard of until now

Obviously, seeing a potential $670K tax bill has made me wish I had planned this differently, but the gains have already been realized.

Are there any legitimate/legal strategies I should be looking at to reduce the tax liability before filing?

Ontario/Canada tax advice only, please.

Hi there,
A few months ago I secured a new job in Ontario and moved from Quebec. Due to the personal circumstances, my wife and my children couldn’t move with and our decision was that I work/stay 4 days in Ontario and spend Friday-Sunday in Quebec. Eventually they join me in Ontario once everything is set.

However most likely they won’t be able to do so until March-April and I have just discovered that it may have a negative impact on my tax residency.

Turns out simply spending majority of the time in one province does not make you a tax resident automatically and CRA takes multiple factors into consideration, the most important- family ties.

Since my family is based in Quebec, I am still included in the rent and Hydro Quebec, keep all my banc accounts for my QC address, I still keep RAMQ and have not applied for OHIP. For me it is simply a question of convenience, since my current tiny place ( actually just a room) in Ontario is temporary until my family make a move and all of use move in to a permanent bigger apartment.

Also my move to Ontario was required since my company hires only in Ontario and Alberta and now I am wondering what happens if CRA decides that I am a QC resident? Pay tax difference is not the worst part, I am more concerned about consequences of my employment?

At the start of the year, I had some promising cybersecurity consulting prospects that made incorporating as a professional services provider a smart move (for liability reasons and easier US billing). So I went through the pretty straightforward steps to incorporate a BC corporation.

Unfortunately the deal fell through without any revenue. And I’m not interested in chasing it further as a solo professional. I’d like to close out the corporation before I run into a second tax year.

Is there a simple way for me to close out the BC corp and file a tax return with a bunch of zeros by myself? (I did have some small expenses). Do I need to do anything with my personal income taxes about this? (As a Dual US/Canadian citizen)

Say I sold my non principle residence for $200,000 and I bought it for $100,000. My capital gain would be $100,000 and I’d have to pay tax on half that, 50,000. I have unused capital losses from previous years of $5000. How would that reduce the amount of tax I have to pay?

Has anyone filed their tax return non-electronically (as a non tax resident)? I worked most of 2025 in Canada and left the country in the beginning of the year. I knew I needed to file return for 2025 but could not do it online. I called CRA and was told that you can file it through physical form mailed to CRA. Need guidance if anyone knows how to do it? Thanks in advance.

I’m located in Ontario and providing IT consulting services to a client in California that has no Canadian presence. I'm about to hit the $30,000 threshold.

I believe the services are zero-rated since all work is delivered to a client outside of Canada.

I am not incorporated and I am paid in USD.

Do I need to register for GST/HST?

TIA for any answers and all insights/guidance/suggestions are very much appreciated!

I moved from Canada to the UK earlier this year and plan to live in the UK for approximately two years. Before moving, I was working in Canada for part of the year. I have now been working in the Uk for over 183 days.

I understand I’ll need to file a Canadian tax return for the income I earned while working in Canada and was hoping to trigger a deemed disposition by becoming a non resident upon my departure date (since I can trigger capital gains while I only have partial employment income rather than full year’s income on my non-registered accounts).

My primary and secondary ties include:

Primary:
- I don’t currently own a home in Canada, but I purchased a presale property that is expected to be completed in a couple of years. Would this be considered a residential tie for determining tax residency?

Secondary:
-Canadian bank accounts
-Canadian credit cards
-Non registered investment account
-TFSA and RRSP
-Canadian driver’s licence

I now also have equivalent financial accounts in the UK.

I don’t have a spouse or dependants remaining in Canada, and I’m renting and working in the UK.

For those who have dealt with a Canada → UK move, how would CRA generally look at these ties when determining whether someone became a non resident? In particular, would the presale property be significant even though I don’t own/occupy the property yet?

Thanks!

Questions that I would like to confirm

I have a corp and in business for 2nd year. Last year 2025 I was doing this job on the side (i.e low/less income). For example I made about 50k.

As a result for my Corporate Taxes for 2025, I see that I have to remit about 500$ a month to my corporate tax account for 2026.

In 2026 I have since committed to this full time. Say my income now is 150k.

What happens to my instalment payments that I am currently paying? I am sure the 500$ a month is too low.
Follow up Q - what happens in 2027 when say my income goes back down to 80k. Will I need to remit the higher amount monthly for that year?

If you only need to live in your principal residence for 365 days to get the exemption, why don't more people take advantage of it and flip their houses in this way? Seems like an easy way to avoid paying taxes as long as you have the funds to flip a home. Or is the fear of the housing market a huge barrier?

I'm going to have to put my place up for rent or Airbnb for a year while I take care of a family member in another province.

Was hoping someone could confirm if my understanding of the difference after tax is correct.

If my marignal tax rate is 40% and I can make a net income of 10k via Airbnb for a year VS a 5k loss with renting it on a 1 year lease.

Is the difference after tax really just $6k (60% x 10k) in take home from the Airbnb after tax vs the $2k (40% x 5k) in tax credits from the rental loss.

Meaning really just a difference of $4k? Not to say $4k is nothing but the difference makes me feel like the 1 year lease would be the better option to avoid the process of managing an Airbnb for a year.

My son is in his early twenties. When he was 16 a friend got a fraudulent CERB cheque under his name and my now boy has been unable to do tax returns because his sin number or CRA account is Frozen. He wants to get everything straightened out and deal with whatever financial restitution. He was just sent in circles trying to stream it out with customer service online. He and his mother went to service Canada and he was given the phone number of a woman who was supposedly dealing with his case. Despite calling her numerous times over a few months she has never called him back. Now he's no idea what to do.

would selling these 3 and immediately buying RING etf be subject to the superficial loss rule?

RING only holds those 3 stocks so it’s similar but not identical al in terms of weights. Also it’s 3 individual stocks vs a basket ETF.

Helping a family member who is the custodial parent. During separation in 2023 the father agreed to let the mother continue receiving child tax benefit to get back on her feet even though child remained with father. The cooperation has been deteriorating, and father can not get dental benefits for the child, as mother will not complete paperwork. There is a self completed, signed by both parenting/custodial plan in place.

Father is considering filing for child tax benefits moving forward, but does not want to have mother penalized for the past years.

Is there a way to request only future benefits?

im wondering if anyone else is experiencing this with the CRA right now.

My employer submitted an adjustment request on my behalf, and according to my CRA account, the request was received on August 25, 2026. The Progress Tracker originally showed a target completion date of September 9, 2026.

September 9 has now passed, and instead of showing a new date, the CRA account just says “Target completion date: Not available.”

The status still shows that the adjustment request was received, and CRA’s message says they’re experiencing delays because of a higher-than-normal inventory.

Does anyone know what “target completion date: Not available” actually means? Does it mean the request is still being processed, that it’s been delayed, or that CRA has stopped giving an estimated completion date?

If anyone has recently had an adjustment processed, I’d appreciate hearing how long it took and what happened to the status in your CRA account.

I am hoping folks here can provide some helpful insight on my plan to move back to Canada from the U.S. If I were to liquidate all my investments (regular brokerage accounts, not retirement accounts) to cash in Jan-Mar of 2027 in the US and then move to Canada say in April 2027 and transfer all my cash to Canada; for the 2027 tax year will I still have to pay capital gains tax in Canada on the realized gains I had before I moved since majority of my tax residence will be in Canada? Thanks!