Non-Resident tax form NR4? Need HELP :)

Hi

Now I realize (after signing up) that technically I'm probably on the wrong forum, but I'm hoping some kind and 'tax knowledgeable' person may be able to help.

I'm a UK citizen now living in Canada. I'm now a Canadian Resident and hold my residency card, but not yet a citizen (i.e. not yet hold a Canadian passport).

While filing my 2007 tax I realized that I had some NR4 forms posted to me. From what I understand the NR4 forms are for non-residents and show tax that has been withheld. The problem is I'm not a non-resident.anyone have any idea why I would be recieveing NR4 forms from my bank even though I'm a resident?

Again, I really appreciate any advice you can offer.

Thanks
Mark

Because either (a) you never told the bank you are resident or (b) more likely, they're total idiots and never clicked on the box which says you're a resident when you gave them your change of address.

Some banks are even more collosally stupid than others, for example, they will change the status on your chequing account and send the statements to your Canadian address BUT, on your other accounts they never actually changed it. Really, really crap.

An NR4 is essentially the same as a T5, so when you do your tax return, you have to attach the NR4 to it in exactly the same way, and you use the gross amount to figure your tax. You cannot claim back the tax that was withheld anywhere on the T1.

You have to file an NR7-R with the NR4s and your T1 to get the tax back and God help you on that one, is all I can say. There is no electronic version of the NR7-R for EFILE so you have to use a paper return. If you file anywhere but to Ottawa, they will lose it in the internal post when it's sent to the non-resident dept. in Ottawa.

And the non-resident dept. in Ottawa doesn't follow their own instructions on their own form, they say you must file it with a T1, but the instructions say quite clearly you can file it separately with the NR4s at any point up to I think it's six years after you paid the tax to reclaim it.

I'm currently in the process of making a formal complaint to the CRA about that particular issue because the people in the non-resident dept. are utterly hopeless, to put it mildly. They have no e-mail address. They don't respond to faxes. They will not phone you. You have to do the whole thing by mail, although you can phone them or fax them, but they always respond by mail - maybe.

And in the meantime go to your bank and tell the morons in there to make sure ALL your accounts are set to resident, not just the chequing account.

There's a reason the UK is the world's leading financial centre.

Hi

Thanks so much for your reply.it's extremely helpful. I totally agree with the stupidity of the processes over here, and yes it was my banks mess up! I also appreciate how Canadian processes are unfortunately on the archaic side!

Again, thanks for the help!

I was wrong about this, because you are resident you have to file the NR4 with your T1 (or at least report it on your T1), you can't use NR7-R, that's only for non-residents.

You do have to report the gross amount on your T1 as I said above, but you ALSO have to report the tax withheld on line 437 of your T1 (even though it's not income tax deducted). Otherwise the CRA aren't aware of it and can't refund it. They tell me. Even though it's all listed on the NR4 slip.

Basically to cut a long story short they've made it as difficult as humanly possible to claim the tax back, hmm, I wonder why?