Serbinski Accounting Firms

"MFs are PFICs unless you know otrherwise, so the room for interpretation is not favourable."

I seem to remember reading something on this site that you did not consider Canadian MFs to be PFICs since they pay out distributions as they go. Has something changed???

Mr. Sargant,

That is a very encouraging response. I'm curious if you are a US citizen or not? I imagine that the answer to that question could impact the response of some brokers.

Thanks.

"....flat 20% tax you will pay on IRA withdrawals..." FYI, I think the treaty withholding rate for IRA withdrawals by a Canadian resident is only 15%. (Not that this changes the recommendation, but just wanted to be accurate.) See page 39 in pub 515: http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p515.pdf

"Again, you live in canada and are fully taxed there, so you will not be getting anywhere near the tax credit you are calculating." By this statement, do you mean FTC's in the US are limited by my average U.S. tax rate (which will be lower than average Cdn)? So I would only use enough to g...

Interesting. For some reason, I thought that Canada's 50% inclusion on capital gains meant that the credit needed to be scaled back by using the lower amount towards credit on 1040? Sounds like good news compared to what I thought! Now using the method you outline, I see an interesting issue. The ca...

Hello, What a wonderful forum! I have been reading extensively the various posts on how an American should use Canadian tax on their 1040 (using 1116). The one thing that I'm still confused on is how to handle Canadian eligible dividends (i.e. gross-up amounts vs. actual) and how to handle capital g...