Canadian citizen moving back from USA questions

Income tax policy, rules, problems, strategy and software. Property and consumption taxes too.
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lapfrank
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Canadian citizen moving back from USA questions

Post by lapfrank »

Hi everyone,

New to this forum, so I'm not sure if I'm posting in the right section as my query covers quite a bit.. (investments, townhouse that's being put up for rent, etc.), but hopefully someone can give me some input.

I'm Canadian citizen from Quebec here. I've been living in Seattle for 4+ years and I bought a townhouse a few months after I moved in. I'm a non-resident of Canada for tax purposes right now. I'm moving to Vancouver, BC from Seattle to settle back in Canada for the long term (hopefully). I plan on keeping my house and renting it out through a property management company because of how great the market is down here (not as crazy as Vancouver and not for the same reasons IMHO ; high-paying IT tech jobs are actually coming to Seattle, unlike Vancouver where it seems to be mostly speculation?). Sorry for the long intro.

My questions are mostly about taxation on my property in the US and all my ETF's / mutual funds with Vanguard / etc in the US.

Property: When I leave the US, I'll have to do a deemed disposition of all my assets. For a house, what would suffice to prove the current value of a house? Would online sources like Redfin / Zillow be enough or do I need to get something more official? I understand you get taxed for all cap gains after you move back to Canada. From a US point of view, I've lived in the house for 4 years so I think I have 2 years until I have to worry about the "2 years out of 5" rule about paying capital gains on it and not being able to claim the primary residence exemption. Is my assumption wrong for those who know US rules?

Money: Should I keep the ETFs / mutual funds that are not in 401K/IRAs or Roth IRAs and deal with all the paperwork for tax purposes or sell everything before I move back and avoid the paperwork hassle? We're talking about 150k here. I think the better yields and lower fees from the US probably outweigh the pain of filing out all the paperwork?

Oh and I'm looking forward to be back in Canada even though it's only 2.5 hours away from where I'm at right now ;-)

Thanks all!

Frank.
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