# British "visitor" living common law in Canada Tax Question



## MLH (Jan 22, 2012)

When my (now) husband came to Canada- he arrived as a visitor as per the suggestion from an immigration and settlement worker here.

It was suggested that we should apply for sponsorship once he was here on a visit and request an extension on the visitation status, until we sorted the common law sponsorship by proving that we lived together etc. This was all done successfully, we are married and he is on his way to citizenship now...

That said, part of the process was that we had to file a tax return together to provide proof that we were living common law. 

He arrived in the country early October. Our tax year is from Jan-December, filed sometime around March and the fiscal year July-July for any child tax benefit, rebates, etc based on the previous years income.

When we filed our taxes with Canada Revenue Agency, they insisted that we had to claim my (now) husband's income-income that he made in the UK, income that was already taxed in the UK, income that had never contributed to my household income for that year because he was not living here while working in the UK-he was still resident of the uk with his own mortgage, bills, etc.

We argued that it didn't make sense, but being quite naive to it all we just sucked it up and carried on because they were not willing to budge. They combined our income which made it look like I made an outrageous amount of money (that I had never actually had the benefit of) and it affected the tax credit amounts that I would have naturally been eligible for as a working parent in a single income family, it caused issues with all income tested supports etc. which we really could have done without because he was unable to work in Canada until he obtained permanent residency status (2+ years)...

Has anyone else been through this?

I never would have thought to bring this up again, but after reading some of these posts, I started to question whether or not I should look at this again...who knows, maybe we would qualify for a readjustment with the right sort of advice or a good accountant.

Does this seem right or fair?


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