Sunday, September 03, 2006

Residency status

I know that the Canada Revenue Agency (Canada's tax-collectors) means well, and that they really do try not to make life miserable for people on purpose, but our experience with them over the years has been a rather frustrating one to say the least. I'll not go into the issues of the past, but rather inform you of our latest encounter.

You see, I keep making the mistake of answering questions at face value. For example, if the CRA asks, "Are you married?" I am likely to answer "yes" because I am. However, answers like that seem to haunt me as in what happened recently...

I have noticed that we have stopped receiving the child tax benefit for our children. When I asked our finance guy at FEB International about it he asked if we had filled in the question on our taxes that asked if we left Canada during that tax year. Of course, we had, so I answered "Yes" and gave them the date. He said, "If (you) did that is where the problem started. As missionaries we encourage all to never answer that question. It starts a whole process that is difficult to reverse. The question in their system is really asking 'Did you cease to be a resident of Canada for tax purposes' and not did you physically leave the country which is how most interpret it."

So now we find ourselves being treated by the Canadian government as non-residents. No CTB (a loss of about $300 monthly), plus my Canadian bank account is taxed every month! (Fortunately this is not a big loss as our assets are miniscule.) And all because I thought I was doing the right thing by answering the question honestly.

We would appreciate your prayers on this matter. We will file this week for our residency status to be changed, but my dealings with the government have often been long and arduous, and we generally lose even when we think we have an open-and-shut case.