Non-residents of Canada generally have no Canadian filing obligations unless they earn income in Canada. In particular, if a non-resident receives rental income, dividends, commissions or other passive income in Canada, a non-resident tax account will be created through which the non-resident will remit his or her Canadian taxes. Previously, if the non-resident wanted to provide his or her representative with the authorization to communicate with the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) on his or her behalf, a letter establishing the authority was required.
The CRA recently released Form NR95 (Authorizing or Cancelling a Representative for a Non-Resident Tax Account) which will allow a taxpayer to authorize or to cancel a representative’s access to his or her non-resident account or, to make changes to the representative information. As of May 14, 2018, Form NR95 replaces the letter previously required by the CRA.
All the current authorizations for non-resident tax accounts will need to be renewed by submitting Form NR95. The CRA has not released an official date as to when the old authorization will expire but it is advisable that Form NR95 be submitted to avoid any issues for representatives attempting to contact the CRA on behalf of a non-resident.
The link to access the NR95 is the following:
https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/forms-publications/forms/nr95.html
About the author:
Hugo Chalifour, CPA, CA, is a Tax Specialist at Crowe BGK
Connect with him: [email protected]