Serbinski Accounting Firms

I just want to confirm that whether or not I need to file form 8938. If I add the max values of all my accounts it equals about $220K. On December 31st 2016, the total value of all accounts was less than $200K and I obviously never had $300K or more during the year. My understanding is that based on...

Hello I am a dual Canadian/US citizen living in Canada. I sold some stocks with a US broker this year and was issued a 1099-DIV and 1099-B for the stock sale. I'm not sure why I was not provided a T5 as my address with the broker is in Canada. How should I be reporting this income to the CRA? If I u...

What prompted me to ask these questions is that my broker asked me to fill a W-8 form to re-certify that I am a non-US person, in that case a Canadian... So the first time around, when I opened this account, I identified myself as a Canadian by mistake and I wonder if that constitutes some type of &...

Thank you for your reply. I think I did not explain myself clearly enough. I am with a Canadian Subsidiary of a very large US broker... So I don't think the broker or myself are violating any laws (when it comes to that). I'm worried about the fact that the broker asks its customers to identify them...

Here is my situation. I’d appreciate some help.

I am a dual citizen, born in the US in 1984. I became a citizen of Canada in 1991, I currently live and work in Montreal, Quebec. Other than being born in the US, I have no affiliation to the United States; I don’t even have a social security number. I recently had to renew my US passport because I needed to travel to the US.

I have a broker’s account (Interactive Brokers) where I have been actively trading stocks for the past three years. I hold both Canadian and US securities. All in all, I have about 20k invested in US/Canadian stocks and ETFs (about a 50/50 split). I don’t really keep track of my PnL, I can say that in total my account has grown by about 2000$ in the past three years which is very small (about 10% return over three years…).

I pay income tax to Canada every year (I’ve been employed two years) and have been declaring taxes for the past 6 years (even when I was a student). I now want to start at least declaring my revenue to the US… I just wonder if I owe the US government anything and generally speaking, how do I calculate what I could potentially owe in the future. I have never declared income tax related to my stock trading activity because of simple negligence, I didn’t know what to do/declare and simply forgot about it. I was never worried because like I mentioned before, the amounts in play are almost negligiblel…

On the other hand, I believe I have opened my trading account as a “Foreign entityâ€￾ (as a Canadian resident and citizen) which is wrong because I’ve recently noticed that it does not apply to US citizens even if they reside in another country. I don’t know if this constitutes fraud or not… I have nothing to hide and know that I potentially owe peanuts in taxes, but want to be on the right side of the law. Do you think I could contact my broker and declare I am a US Citizen (change the “statusâ€￾ of my account)? Would that have some negative repercussions?

Any advice would be welcome. What should I do to correct my situation? Do I owe the US government anything?

Thank you in advance.