Canada taxes you on your worldwide income for as long as you're a tax resident — and residency is a question of fact, not paperwork. There's no form that makes you a non-resident and no automatic cut-off when you board the plane. The CRA looks at the ties you keep to Canada versus the life you establish abroad, and the checker above walks through the same factors in the same order the CRA weighs them.
The significant ties dominate the analysis: a dwelling that stays available to you, a spouse or common-law partner in Canada, or dependants in Canada. Keep any one of these and you almost certainly remain a factual resident regardless of where you sleep at night. Secondary ties — vehicles and furniture, bank accounts and credit cards, a driver's licence, provincial health coverage, memberships — matter cumulatively; the more you keep, the muddier your position. The ties you build in your new country count in the other direction: a permanent home abroad, local employment, family with you, and a demonstrated intention that the move is permanent.
Your residency status determines everything downstream. The day you become a non-resident is the day the deemed disposition rules apply for departure tax, and from that point Canadian-source income like CPP, OAS, and RRSP withdrawals is taxed through Part XIII non-resident withholding instead of a regular return. Getting the status — and the date — wrong in either direction is one of the most expensive mistakes in cross-border planning.
This checker gives you a likely status, not a ruling. Borderline situations — a house you rent out but could reoccupy, a spouse who follows you a year later, long visits back — turn on details no questionnaire captures, and treaty tie-breaker rules add another layer when both countries claim you. Treat an "uncertain" result as a prompt to get professional cross-border advice before you rely on non-resident status.
