Tax question about stocks and Permanent Residency

[sha]

Hello,
I am new to the forum and searched quite a bit. None of the posts were similar to my situation. My question has two parts.

1) I have been a permanent resident of the US since March 2006. I have worked for American companies (legally) and my husband and I have always filed our taxes jointly in the States. Do I have any obligations to pay Canadian taxes seeing how I do not have a bank account there, I had a Quebec Pesion Plan but there wasn't much in it and my healthcare and driver's license are expired and done with? I never really severed ties with Canada but I have no home there and will not be moving back. I just visit my family there.

2) I was interested in trading stocks online. I noticed some online brokerages do not allow Canadians who are permanent residents in the US to trade with them. If I were to let's say open an account with TD Ameritrade or e-trade, would I have to pay Canadian taxes on my stock earnings even though I have not lived there for almost 4.5 years? Why are there restrictions on permanent residents trading stocks in the States?

Any help would be great!!
thanks

[Steven]

1) You have no tax obligations in Canada from the sounds of it. Being an LPR of the US and living there are pretty major residential ties to the US. But you do need to tell the CRA that you left and on what date - in which case you may have overclaimed deductions that year because they should have been pro-rated.

2) This is because of the Patriot Act which requires financial institutions to have a customer identification programme (CIP). The regs lay down basic requirements for the CIP but there are differences between each company, some just say they will only deal with US citizens to keep it simple, although usually they say they will only with US citizens and LPRs, bit unusual not to. The problem being that it's hard to identify someone via an on-line interaction.

This causes me truly endless hassle personally, either because they only have an on-line presence so there is no way around it, or their customer service reps are complete muppets and don't understand the company's CIP properly.

[sha]

Thanks for your help Steve.

I have a few more questions.

If I have already been trading stocks online, without having notified the CRA, does that still mean I have to pay taxes on my profits to Canada, despite living here for a few years?

Secondly, sorry to sound like a fool, but what does pro-rated mean.

thanks!

[Steven]

Pro-rated in this instance means reduced to the number of days that you were a resident of Canada.

You owe nothing to the CRA, your only problem is that the company you're dealing with doesn't want to deal with LPRs, which is very odd.