Non-Resident Bank account in Canada?

Steven also goes on to say: "Also another tip is to state you left on 31st December". This is what made me think that it's possible to decide when you want your departure date date to be.

If you can. I didn't mean you could lie about it, but it does make things easier from various perspectives if you can legitimately say you left at the end of the year because it is a complete tax year.

There is a little bit of wiggle room there because it takes a bit of time to physically move your stuff, ties, wife, whatever from one country to another so you can to a limited extent choose your departure date but you can't state it fraudulently.

Tax treaty or no tax treaty, CRA likes to decide these things the way it works out best for them, not you. If deeming you resident works for them, then they'll do it and you have to point to the tax treaty. If hammering you with departure tax works for them, they'll do it.

Been so many threads and such on here over the past couple of years where people have ended up being done over by the CRA either way. "Oh, you left, you must owe us departure tax." "Oh you claimed child benefits, that means you must be resident so we're going to deem you resident and claim back taxes for all those years."

Just depends which bureaucrat you're dealing with.

That is why consistent behaviour on the part of the taxpayer is the best defense:

You move, you advise any Cdn payors that you are non-resident, you cancel all benefits (GST, CCTB, DL, OHIP) that are reserved for residents, you establish ties in your new country (home, school, job, DL), file one's Cdn departure return on time the following april, and report and pay tax in your new country as a resident.

It's worked this way for years.

As steven says, it's when one tries to play both sides of the fence that one will get burned. "forgetting" to notify RRSP manager, cashing CCTB, claiming UI, not filing departure return, choosing 1040NR. Brings trouble.

I've been living in the USA (California) since last fall. I have two (regular) bank accounts in Canada - PC Financial and Etrade (now "scotiaitrade"). My understanding is that if I want to be considered a non-resident of Canada I need to make these accounts "non-resident" accounts (is this just a simple change of address?). So I phoned up these banks, and they both told me that they don't have non-resident accounts, so my only option is to close the accounts.

1) Would I be better off to move the money from those accounts to a US account, or try to get a non-resident account in Canada to put it in?

2) What is a good bank that offers non-resident accounts? I did a search and it appears Citibank might be an option? Any other suggestions?

TD ?

3) In my etrade/scotiaitrade account I have some stock, so in order to close this account I'm assuming I would need to sell the stock. When I bought it I hadn't even thought of moving to the US and obviously wanted to sell it when it had increased in value, but some is positive and some is negative now. I guess I could always sell it, transfer the money to my US accounts and repurchase the stock? If I did that, it might actually be advantageous for the stock to have lost money? I'm trying to wrap my head around this .....any insight would be appreciated. Feel free to point me at existing threads that I might have missed in my search.

Thanks very much for any help,
Richard