Serbinski Accounting Firms

Thanks, everyone, for chipping in. I was actually already aware of most of what people shared - although the fact they shared it, makes me think this thread may be useful to others. I already have a US bank account (carefully retained when we moved back to Canada), plus accounts in both CAD and USD ...

I'm a dual citizen residing in Canada, and my dad died in December. My sibling and I were named beneficiaries on both dad's TFSA and RRIF. The investment firm where they were held knows I'm a U.S. person. Early this year, I received a half share of each account, with no tax withheld. The estate rece...

I attempted to create a 2021 departure return for my daughter, who has been a grad student in the UK for the last few years. She's been filing Canadian returns all along, since she was just in UK on a student visa and the preponderance of her ties were in Canada. However in 2021 her situation change...

I did this in 2016. Moved back to Canada as a dual citizen while keeping my US job remotely. US manager briefly assumed they could just keep my on US payroll, but was quickly disabused of this notion by payroll and HR departments. Luckily the company had/has operations in Canada, therefore it was a ...

US/Canadian dual citizen living in Canada, planning to retire this year and start collecting SS. Looking for advice on getting my SS payments directly deposited to a Canadian bank, vs sending them to our US bank account and then writing checks to move the money to Canada. Spouse is already retired a...

I was checking because I thought it might be considered cricket. Rules about entitlements and taxes sometimes seem odd and arbitrary, and I simply couldn't find any mention of CPP sharing + WEP anyway. I expect you are right because you are generally very knowledgeable.

Note that CPP sharing is not the same as pension splitting. In pension splitting, the pension is all paid to the spouse who earned it; a portion of the income is only attributed to the other spouse on the Canadian tax return. This is clearly just a provision for reducing taxes, not a change to anyon...

Dual citizen planning to retire next year. My CPP will be larger than my spouse's. I'm considering applying for CPP sharing, which would be modestly helpful for income splitting just with CRA. When applying for Social Security, is it fair to submit my shared CPP amount? That would reduce WEP a bit.

In 2016 we moved back to BC after more than a decade in the US. After much debate, we did bring two cars with us. The export (from US) and import (to Canada) process looked very intimidating, but turned out not to be bad. In retrospect I'm happy with the decision. Unless you want to pay a broker to ...

According to Democrats Abroad Taxation blog, the Get My Payment tool requires a 5 digit US zip code, despite a misleading message that implies non-US postal codes are accepted. Non US codes are not accepted, neither is leaving the field empty, so for those of us who file with our non-US address, the...

It seems that the IRS's "Get My Payment" tool https://www.irs.gov/coronavirus/get-my-payment doesn't work for foreign addresses. This would be consistent with other IRS tools as described here https://www.irs.gov/individuals/taxpayer-identity-verification-information#formataddress It's TBD...

I would greatly prefer to get residency based taxation instead of stimulus checks. But since that option doesn't seem to be on offer, I'll take the checks (spouse and I should both get one) and regard it as a small offset to the misery of filing with the IRS every year.

I'm amused by how the noncompliance advocate claims it's hunky dory for US citizens to ignore US laws, "The IRS can't do a thing about it" and yet, is very concerned to conceal one's actual street address from the IRS. If they can't do a thing about it, what does it matter if they know whe...

Old thread, but seems relevant. Due to annoyance with TurboTax not supporting exclusion of Social Security income (CPP, OAS, SSA) from US tax by treaty, this year I bought TaxAct. The download version because I'm suspicious of entering my tax information on a website. Learning a new look-and-feel (T...

I take it back! I am new to TaxAct and don't know if I could now reproduce how I got it to give me that message saying I couldn't override the taxable portion to zero. I just tried again, and now I see a checkbox for "US citizen living abroad and benefits are exempt from U.S. tax due to a treat...