Is my boat's flag state relevant to my tax residency?

[carstenb]

Most tax authorities do not allow you to leave their tax jurisdiction unless you can prove you have entered into another country's tax jurisdiction (meaning a letter from that other tax authority).

[GRIT]

Originally Posted by fxykty

Do you declare a tax residency somewhere?

We’ll have our (passive) income while cruising coming from one country, so even though we won’t be resident there anymore (Covid willing) we will keep our tax residency there for a much lower rate for tax withholding at source.

If no tax residency, doesn’t that mean you pay more tax on your income?

Yes, we have hired a new accountant, who specializes in these things.

My wife has lived in the USA for more than two years, but as I was still building the boat, my accountant said we were both still considered resident of Canada. The new accountant says otherwise, and now that we've launched the boat, we'll both be tax residents of the USA. We'll see what the CRA says, but I'm hoping for a big refund for the past two years of taxes.

We also have passive income in Canada, which is taxed at a 25% rate, as non-residents.

Cheers.
Paul.