Canadian working for Canadian Company residing in US

Hello,

Thanks for taking my question. I'm a Canadian citizen married and working full time in Canada. I used to work and reside in US, and my family still lives there as my wife is working with an H-1. I have a B-2 visa stamp with which I visit my family periodically.

My Canadian employer is comfortable with me working from home and it does not matter to my employer if I am in Canada or US as I perform my duties.

The work I do of course is for my Canadian employer only and I get paid in Cdn to my Cdn bank. Since I own rental properties in the US, apart from our house in US, I have no problem disclosing my world income in the US and filing taxes as need be in US as I do in Canada.

Would it be therefore legal for me to reside in US on say H-4 and work for my Canadian employer?

I appreciate your answer.

Mario Tortelli

It depends solely on the company you work for and what they do, and not really on your status, since there is no status which your employer could get for you that would make this work legal if it was not already.

The rule of thumb is that (a) the company must not have ANY US activity, and (b) your work is not benefitting from your physical location is US.

If (a) and (b) are true, you can do this work in any status (B2, TD, H4, TN, H1, F1, F1 etc). It would not violate your current status to do this work.

If you cannot satisfy (a) and (b), then you cannot perform this work in any status, and, as a Cdn comapny, there is no status that they can seek for you.

Now, assuming you can do this work legally, you would have to be paid as a contractor, since (1) you would be neither working nor living in Canada, and (2) setting you up as a US employee would also make the comapny have a US presence, thus violating condition (a) above.

To be sure, you are not the firt spouse that has come down unable to work, and loojking for a loop-hole. That is the only one.

To explain (b): there can be no appreciable difference in your working from your living room in US, as there would from your living room in canada. You wiould have no access to some resource, market, physical locale in US, that you would not have in canada.

btw, make sure neither of you do any work on the properties you own in US. No status allows you to do any of that. You must hire a US contractor.