14 How does the CRA assess residency?

Amrick Sidhu and Manisha Soorah

Residents of Canada are divided into three main categories: part-year residents, ordinary residents and deemed residents.  We’ll address ordinary and deemed residents now (part-year residents will be addressed later in the textbook).  Both ordinary residents and deemed residents are taxable in Canada on their worldwide income. Ordinary residents are assessed based on their Primary/Significant and Secondary residential ties in Canada, with more emphasis being placed on the Primary/Significant residential factors.

Primary/Significant residential ties include whether a dwelling place is available for an individual to use in Canada, and the location of that individual’s spouse and dependents.

There are lots of Secondary residential ties including Landed Immigrant Status, whether an individual has medical insurance, membership in local clubs, citizenship etc.  Again, all these factors are considered as a whole – with Significant ties given more ‘weight’ – when assessing residency.

Assessing residency. Image description available.
Figure 14.1 Factors used in assessing residency [Image Description]

Some individuals are ‘deemed’ to be residents of Canada despite not meeting the requirements for ‘ordinary’ residents.  These deemed residents are broken into two basic categories: Individuals required to live outside Canada by virtue or their employment with (or connected to) the Canadian government; and Sojourners, i.e. individuals who are temporarily resident in Canada for 183 days or more in the year.

1. Canadian government employee required to live outside of Canada 2. Sojourner temporary resident in Canada for ≥ 183d in yr
Types of deemed residentsNote, in the image (above left) the reference should be to ITA 250(1)(b) and (c) rather than ITA 250(a)

Interactive content (Author: Amrick Sidhu, June 2019)

Interactive content (Author: Arminder Sandhu, August 2019)

References and Resources:

  • IT Folio S5-F1-C1: Determining an Individual’s Residence Status

June 2019

All media in this topic is licensed under a CC BY-NC-SA(Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike) license and owned by the authors of the text.

Image Description: 

Figure 14.1 Image Description: Factors used in assessing residency are significant factors like dwelling place, spouse and dependents, and secondary factors like landed immigrant status, medical insurances and memberships, medical insurance etc. [Return to Figure 14.1]

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