Serbinski Accounting Firms

Thanks so much! That is what I had reasoned would be logical, but taxation doesn't always follow my ideas. The part considered wages gets included in income at the time of purchase (ESPP) or vesting (RSUs), with a portion of the RSUs withheld to cover the income tax. This seems to work similarly in ...

Dual Canadian/US citizen, living in Canada, employed by the Canadian branch of a US-based company. I have an employee stock plan account at ETrade, holding some shares of my employer (NASDAQ listed), acquired via ESPP and RSU plans. Thinking of selling current holdings. Note: All of my current holdi...

We are Canadian and US dual citizens, resident in Canada. Husband is now filling out the paperwork to start his pension from US employer. This shouldn't be subject to US withholding at all, because under the treaty it is taxed by Canada, not US. However, according to form W4-P and Pub 505, it appear...

Thanks much for the information. In answer to your questions: 1. 401(K) was with T. Rowe Price and I assumed I couldn't manage it from Canada, by analogy with other investments (we had Roth IRAs with Vanguard and those could be kept but withdrawals were the only allowed transaction). I'm detecting f...

Grr! Exactly my scenario but too late for me. Mind, perhaps I would have moved it anyway. I wanted to get my retirement savings into a vehicle I could manage cross-border. So there's that. The single biggest part of our retirement savings is my US IRA (formerly 401(K)). Although it's not the only th...

Canada will treat your Roth as non-taxable if and only if you (a) never make a contribution to it while you're a Canadian resident and (b) send a letter electing to defer taxation on it to the Canadian Competent Authority. Otherwise Canada will tax you on the earnings in it.

Another thing to consider about deferring taking CPP or SS, is that although you'll get a larger payment, you're pushing it more into your lower-spending years. Seniors don't maintain the same lifestyles from their 60s into their 90s. People in their 60s and 70s are commonly keen to travel, etc. Peo...

In case it's not clear, because I found this confusing when it applied to me, you can use PPT to claim 2555 on your US return for the year you moved out of the US, so long as you wait to file the tax return until you've actually been 330 days out of the US. The way to do this is to file for an exten...

Thanks much. I should have thought to ask here last year. We thought she probably counted as a Canadian resident during her stint in France, but we weren't confident of this common sense deduction and found it easiest to do nothing. It's not so much the TFSA room that I care about (since she's a US ...

CRA seems to think daughter, mid 20s, is a non-resident. I'm not sure if this is correct, or how much it matters, but I figure I'll ask. Daughter was born in Canada and was an elementary schooler when we moved to US in 2002. She became a US citizen while living in the US. She attended university in ...

Look up top of the forum page and it has a link to the moderator (Mr Serbinski). I used that to email him about the recent spam outburst, which has since been cleaned up. Possibly others sent email as well. Anyway, that's the way to do it.

There was some discussion above of whether EAP disbursements can be paid to the subscriber or have to go direct to the student. We had a family RESP owned by my mother (Canadian citizen and resident, no US involvement). The original contributions were withdrawn long ago, residue in account was all g...

I use my US work VPN to buy US TurboTax and download it from Amazon. It's my one exception to self imposed rule of not using the company VPN for personal stuff. Last year I entered an SE adjustment for negative the amount of SE tax TurboTax had computed for my self-employed spouse, and typed in a se...

Addendum to previous post: Our family became US citizens during our time in US. Hence we all have to file income tax in both Canada and US. If we weren't US citizens there wouldn't be any reason to think about reporting an RESP withdrawal to the IRS.

Are you still the owner (subscriber) of the RESP? If so, I believe according to conservative interpretations, you should have been filing a 3520 about it every year with the IRS, and paying US tax on any gains in the account. The EAP withdrawal may be taxable in your hands by the IRS and your daught...