Global dreams: Tax, legal and financial considerations for life abroad

NUSHIN MANJI: All right. Welcome, everyone, to our global dreams event. My name is Nushin. I'm from Trowbridge Professional Corporation, one of your speaking firms today, and I'll be your emcee tonight. First of all, I'd like to thank you all for your time. I'm sure the weather makes you want to make your dreams quicker a reality, so we're going to try and help you do that.

So today, we'll try to keep our sessions informative, but give you enough time to ask questions at the end. So I ask that you leave all your questions at the end of all the presentations, because there will be a question and answer period then. And also a friendly reminder, if your phone is not on silent, if you could please set it now. And also, our speakers will be around at the end for questions as well.

So I'd like to start by asking each of our speakers just to give a brief introduction on themselves and their respective companies. Brian, you can start.

BRIAN COHEN: Right. So Brian Cohen, I'm from Gowling. So thank you for coming in tonight and joining us at our shop downtown. It's not the easiest place to get to sometimes if you live north. So that is-- or south. That's greatly appreciated. I practice in the area of private client, which translated, basically means I work in the world of everything at the shareholder level and above. So trust, wills, estates, contentious disputes, administration.

And apparently, for the last 10 years, people asking questions about getting out of this country. Great place to live. But more and more, everyone is asking, where can I go besides here? For many, many reasons that we'll get into as the evening progresses. And I'll be around, like you said, to talk later about any ideas that you may have as well.

NUSHIN MANJI: Thanks, Brian.

DIMITRIOS ZARAVINOS: Thank you. Dimitrios Zaravinos. I work with Nushin. And Ernie's back there. He's a partner at Trowbridge Professional Corporation. A little bit about myself. I've been doing this for about 25 years. And by this, I mean expatriate tax. Anything to do with cross-border tax from a personal tax level I basically touch. So anything from drafting compensation and tax equalization agreements for big corporations, to just working with individuals who are coming to Canada and want to leave Canada. They have so many questions in terms of what to do with their assets, et cetera.

I work in Canadian and US tax, but also lived seven years in Australia, so I'm familiar. I haven't been there for 10 years or worked there for 10 years, but familiar with Australian tax as well. And type of business we do is, again, anything cross border. So we have global mobility group that works with employees. We have personal clients, high net worth individuals, to teachers, nurses, et cetera. And then we do corporate work as well. So we can help you with any cross-border tax questions that you may have.

NUSHIN MANJI: Thanks, Dimitrios.

SERGIU HIRTESCU: Hi, my name is Serge. I represent IG Wealth Management here tonight. And my colleague, Iveta Koskina, is here as well. And I'd say on the mission to fill the vacuum of answering the types of questions that people in this room have. It's becoming more and more prevalent of people wanting to not just be snowbirds in Florida, but looking at overseas to Portugal, Spain, other countries of the world. Maybe looking to be permanent residents there or temporary or working.

And I found that in the financial planning landscape, there is a lot of information, but it's not combined together. And that's the aim of what we're trying to do here tonight.

NUSHIN MANJI: Thank you. OK, we'll get started with Brian from Gowlings. Thank you.

BRIAN COHEN: All right. So 6:34. Just keeping an eye on the time. Feel free to yell at me if I'm getting close. Fair enough. So I've given similar talks many times over the last four or five years, and they keep coming back to the same thing. And what's interesting is-- and this is going to sound pretentious. I was just at STEP Cayman last week. STEP is a group of trust and estates practitioners.

And STEP Cayman is an annual event. When I started going in 2017, I think I met Ernie there the first time then. I think there were maybe 80 people. 75, 80 people. And they had 350 this time. And part of the reason is, when you're walking down there, they would stop people like us that work either on that island or others and say, what can we do, interestingly, not to help Canadians come down here, but how do we convince them to come down here?

So it is a two-way street for many countries, which is very interesting. So the islands are all very anxious for Canadians to come down and obviously bring your assets. But the question is, how do you get out? And that's one of the things that I'm going to talk about today. But more so, what it means to be a Canadian resident severing the ties and keeping them severed. The slide deck is long, so I'll get as much as possible, and feel free to ask questions as we go.

So I'm going to start with the basics. Canada, unlike other jurisdictions, taxes based on residency. Not citizenship, not domicile, residency. And that basically is where you live. The problem is the Income Tax Act doesn't actually say what a resident is. So you need to figure that out based on common law or other tests. So if you think about other jurisdictions in the world-- the UK, we would talk about domicile a lot. A lot of the European companies will talk. Countries will refer to domicile. Should be careful with the UK. They're changing the rules as we speak, and so it'll be a little bit different.

For the American people interested in moving to the US, they actually have a citizenship test, and they're unique in that. Because what that does is you don't even have to be in the US. But if you are an American citizen, you're going to be paying tax down there forever and be subject to that regime. But if you want to chat about that, there's people here and we can do that later.

But residency is a common law test. And unfortunately, like many things, when you go to the court and ask a question, they're not going to give you a straight answer. And in fact, they say we're not going to come close. And start with the leading line from Thomson. Quite impossible to give a precise and inclusive definition. It's flexible. So what they do is they look at residence as where your ties are. Where is your mind settled intent to live? Where do you think you actually are from day to day? And that's what drives the question.

So when they looked at it, if you look at Thomson, this is an old, old case. It's actually over 100 years old now, which is interesting. But it's still the leading Supreme Court decision. This individual, Mr. Thomson, was looking at three different jurisdictions. He was in Bermuda, and he bounced back and forth between Bermuda, Canada, and the US. And what happened was Canada said, we're going to tax you. Which is interesting. It's under the 1923 Test, which is a whole different world from the Income Tax Act that we work with today, but it was still a residency test.

And the Supreme Court looked at it and said he wasn't temporarily in Canada. In fact, he was here a heck of a lot. And even though he had roots in the United States, those roots weren't enough to sever from Canada. So we're going to say he is a Canadian resident. Typical legal fashion. No one agrees. A bunch of judges, multiple decisions. The dissent said, actually, he's not even Canadian, nor is he Bermudian. He would have been a US resident. And so they actually would have found him in the US. But overall, what it was looking at was, what was his intent? Where did he intend to live? And I'm going to say in a few moments that intention doesn't matter anymore. But that's the starting point. Where are your ties?

So from Thomson, you end up back in the modern world, Section 253 of the act. And they look at what is ordinarily residence. So I told you earlier, there is no definition of residence. But maybe there is, because here's one. But what does it say? Well, ordinarily, residence means the place where he is in the settled routine of his life regularly, normally, or customarily lives. So they defined residence by using the word lives, which to me is just a circular definition and gets you nowhere.

So what is it really getting down to? They look at how long you're in the country. They look at what your ties to the country are. So really, even though they've legislated something, many years later, Thomson still said the same thing. What is your intent? Where does your mind lead you to be? Are you Canadian in your heart and your mind and you're here with ties, or are you not?

So when you look at residency and you want to get out, you have to look at, what do you need to do to get out? So the first thing you need to do is you look at what ties get you here. If you are Canadian, you have to file a T1. And you don't want to file a T1, because then if you're in the top tax bracket, you're paying $0.52 on the dollar. No one wants to do that.

And so the CRA says if you want to sever your ties, we're going to look at three key things to start. The first, do they have a dwelling for their occupation? This one causes a lot of people consternation when they're looking to leave. Do they actually have a house still in the country? Do they have a spouse or common law partner remaining in Canada? That's the big question number two. Do they have dependents who remain in Canada? That's number three. If you fall into any of these, it's going to be harder for you to say that you've actually severed your ties. And I'm careful in using the word harder. It does not mean it's impossible. And I can give you two examples of recent experiences and conversations where people have severed their ties.

The first is an individual who was getting ready to move to Cayman, and he had done everything to go down there properly, set up corporations, and actually has gone down there. When he started his plans, his spouse was on board 310%. Was tired of the snow, said, I'm out of here, and had a job that the spouse was not happy with at all. Took a year to organize the corporations for whatever reason. And during that year, the spouse changed jobs and actually really likes their job now and said, you know what? I don't know how quick I'm going to go down there.

So the husband left. Severed the ties, filed a tax return, answered the questions. Spouse is still here. And both sides have said, you know what? You're good. You're out. He's still in a reassessment period. But to date, 110% fine that they have said you have severed your ties. Because he's living down there, he's paying rent, he has a job, he has an office. All the checks are coming on island. And so even though the spouse is still here, he's seen as off.

Flip side. An individual that I know moved to the other side of the globe. Spouse has severed all ties, said they're not residents. He has said, I am still resident, because he has a lot of business ties in Canada and has a very big concern that if he severs ties with Canada, his business ties will say, we're not with you anymore, because we want to work with a Canadian company and Canadian individuals. So he has stayed in Canada. Whereas the family is actually over there. The kids are in school. The spouse has a new job and has claimed residency in the other country.

So things can happen. And on the Canadian side, if you want to say you're still Canadian, no one's going to complain. They're going to say, well, Canada's not going to complain. They're going to take their $0.52 and be happy. And then the other country may or may not, depending on the situation.

So if you answer yes to those questions, any of those questions, typically you're going to have to show the CRA that you have left. Even if you say no to everything, there's a whole bunch of other ties that can get you caught here. And these are your secondary ties. And you've probably read them as I've babbled already, so I don't need to go through them. Some of them are interesting and are harder to break. The social ties. I talk a lot about economic ties. Medical coverage, if you don't give it up and things like that.

The interesting one is down at the bottom, the memberships that we'll come back around to in a moment, because how do you sever all of those? But this is the one a lot of people ask me a question about. Can I keep my residence? And really, people don't say, can I keep my residence? Especially people in Ontario. They say, can I keep my cottage? And the answer is definitely maybe.

So what do you do with it? Number one, maybe you can rent it. Maybe you can rent it to a kid at fair market value. The terms of the rental the CRA will look at. If you're actually called onto the carpet, they'll look and say, is it a real rental? Or is this you're renting it to your kid for a dollar? Maybe you can put it into a trust. Maybe you can gift it to a kid.

So all the answers to these questions are always a maybe. It's better. If you come to me and say, what's the best thing to do? I will say sell the cottage. Want to be clean? Get rid of your real property. Well, I'll give it to my kid. That wasn't your question. You asked me, what's the best you can do? The best you can do is sever your ties. If you're going to keep something, the more you do, the more ties you have. Less chance it is that you've severed your ties. CRA is going to say you're still here. And if you're still here, you're going to be filing a T1.

So there is a case, and it's called Mullen. It came out in 2008. Where he severed everything except for this Bellvile cottage. And that's what basically killed them at the end. They said, you are tied here. You're coming back and forth to this cottage. It's the love of your life. And so they said at the end of the day, you are still in Canada. And I apologize that I'm flying through some of these. I'm just trying to be cautious and conscious of the time for everyone.

So fine, you can't get rid of the cottage. Maybe you can. What about your wife and kids? Can you get rid of them? Same question. CRA and the courts, again, never are consistent. So the case at the top, Allchin, is really interesting. Because at first, they said the spouse did not leave to go to the US because the ties to Canada were still there, that she was super close to her husband and her kids. And she lost. And she kept her OHIP, kept her driver's license, kept the club membership. Husband swore an affidavit at one point for some reason that said she was resident in Canada. That was probably a bad fact, one would think. And so they lost at first instance.

Then she came back to the court years later. Facts were basically the same. They said, oh, you know what? Yeah, you're right, it's OK. Whereas in other cases, it's often parents want to leave if you look at my situation. If I want to leave tomorrow to go somewhere, I've got a problem. My kids aren't going anywhere yet. One's just started to work. One's still in university. They're staying here. And my wife may look at me and say, you're going. They're staying here. I need to be able to come back and forth, so I don't want to sell the house because I need to see my kids. I need to be there.

If there is a reason the kids are here, such as school or medical reasons-- and medical reasons, I have seen as being a successful reason for a spouse and child to stay behind. They can be reasonable, and you can make a case that you are going to actually sever the ties. But again, same answer. The more you can sever, the better you can do.

Severing your secondary ties, sometimes a little bit harder. Some things I can say to you with ease. Get rid of the golf club membership. You can golf anywhere in the world. Get rid of the tennis club membership, the gym membership. You can get into all of those. If you want to come and visit Canada and come back and shake hands and go see your friends, tell them to get a membership with a guest pass. There's ways around it. There's no reason to make it easy for the CRA.

The one I find most interesting is the religious institutions. That is on the list of things that are a secondary tie. And I've spoken to a number of clients about this. And if they are religious clients and they go back and forth to the country but they severed their ties, many of them will go to a religious institution-- church, mosque, synagogue, or otherwise. And at the end of the year or during the year, they would want to support that religious institution by way of membership.

I personally see that as a reasonable expense that can be incurred, because you're doing it out of a moral ethical obligation. The CRA has never said anything close to that, so you can't take my word for it. But if that was something that was-- that was the tie to the person coming back and forth, I would hope that wouldn't be the one that traps them. But again, safe if you want to do it. Don't even make those dues payable. Find another way to support whatever religious cause that you want to support.

If you want to maintain your foreign status once you're gone, this becomes important. Once you're out, people make mistakes. Do not come back. Do not get those secondary ties. Do not buy a house in Canada because you thought it was a great deal and the property value went down. Things like that. And don't come for more than 183 days. If you're over here for 183 days or more, you can be found to be a sojourner, which is not the same thing as residency.

Residency implies an intention to stay. Sojourners, you're traveling back and through. And so your mind isn't here, but you could be here working for 183 days and be sojourning, and that's not enough to become a resident. Whereas if you're coming here and you're doing non-work things, you're building that cottage of your dreams, you could end up in trouble. And then if you're deemed to be resident, well, you're going to be paying tax. And there'll be more talk about that down the line.

The other piece that I wanted to chat quickly about in the little bit of time left is trust and immigration. Because before I go down this path, people in this room use trust at all? I'm sure a few. OK, there's a few hands that went up. When a trust, unlike an individual, when it leaves the country, doesn't necessarily go also. The question for trust and the residency of a trust is, where is the mind management and control of that entity?

So if I have a trust and I get on a plane every day that the trust is going to make a decision-- so three times a year, we have trustee meetings and I fly down to Cayman and we have our trustee meetings down there, I can put forward an argument that the residency of the trust is Cayman, not Canada, because the mind management control of that trust is exercised in a foreign jurisdiction. Hard argument to make, but you can make it.

If the trustee leaves-- so if I leave the country and I am a trustee of a trust-- for example, I am the executor of an estate and I'm now making the decisions in another country-- today, I was at a Canadian trust-- that trust left with me, and you're going to have a whole whack of tax problems that connects with that. So you've got to be careful when you go back and forth over the border that it doesn't only affect your position as a person. It can affect trust, which can affect estates. It can affect your status as a Canadian controlled private company. You cross the border, all of a sudden, you're not Canadian controlled anymore. There are certain rules about how you're a Canadian controlled company, whether you're incorporated, who the directors are, who the shareholders are, and the officers are. But all these considerations need to come into play.

So if you leave the country as a trustee and the trust leaves the country as a trustee, you think, OK, so that's not so bad. I'm out of Canada. Great. Not a problem anymore. Except our rules continue to drag you back. So if you own real property in that trust, you're going to still have those 21 year rules coming back to bite you. So every 21 years, that Canadian property will be deemed to be disposed and immediately reacquired. When you walk out of the country or the trust walks out of the country, if it could walk, the trust will have a deemed disposition of its property on the way out the door, just like a person.

And even worse, you can end up in this Section 94 rule. Where that you think you're out of the country, and the Income Tax Act drags you back. So if you have a resident settlor-- so if dad settled this trust for you and the trustee is anyone in this room and you leave the country and you say, therefore, the trust left with me, the CRA is going to say, no, it didn't. You're now a Section 94 trust, which means that trust stays in Canada. And if you move to the US, you're going to have a fight with the US all the time as to how you tax these things.

And I'm sure Trowbridge will have some comments about cross-border and how you work it out in credits and so forth. But Section 94 is a nightmare if you a trust that is on both sides of the border. The other way you can run into this problem is if the trustees are gone but you have a resident beneficiary and someone who was Canadian never made an allocation to the trust, you could end up offside as well. So you to watch those when you leave the country.

So the definition of beneficiaries. Some people will try to stop that to say if you have a beneficiary that's not any beneficiary who is not Canadian, they can't be a beneficiary. It's a little draconian. If you want to do that to your kids, how else are you going to equalize them? So if you're going to think about things like that, I'm happy to chat about them later. We can look into that.

Departure tax. If you end up leaving-- and I'm going to go very high level on this, because others will talk about this in a few moments. If you leave, there is a departure tax. Canada does not have a death tax per se. It does not have an estate tax. We have capital gain tax. And it hits at a number of times when you actually dispose of an asset. Or when you die, or when you leave the country. And at those points in time, you are deemed to have disposed of everything you have and immediately reacquired it.

That rate, interestingly, is 50 or it's 2/3. Can't tell you. Don't have any idea. But if you were to leave the country today, you are going to have to file a tax return that says that you have disposed of your assets and reacquired them. You're going to have to pay your exit tax of 2/3-- sorry, 2/3 inclusion rate. Let's use what they claim it's going to be. And then that rate will be applied at whatever taxation rate is necessary. One's going to guess if you're leaving the country, you may hit that top bracket. So you're looking at somewhere around 33% or so. You have to file the necessary returns. It's due in your normal filing date. If it's a trust, it's 90 days from the end of the year.

There's a reacquisition. So hopefully you get a step up into form basis. But if you don't, then the foreign company country will have to look at it. Certain assets are not subject to that rule. So you have to be careful. And you can look at which assets are or not. The big one is Canadian real property. And that's Canadian real property held directly. Corporations are a little bit different.

But if the Canadian real property is held directly, there is no tax on the way out. The reason for that is when you sell it, the Income Tax Act will get the tax at that point. So if it's an asset that the government can easily control the buying and selling of, they're not as worried that you're going to pay for it-- or sorry, pay the tax on it. Business property if the business carried on in Canada.

Interestingly, RRSPs, RRIFs-- well, RRSPs are a little bit more complicated. TFSAs. All of those, there's no disposition on the way out. But there may be tax when you start withdrawing money from those funds. But you've got to be careful with these things, because depending which country you go to is whether or not you want to keep it alive. The TFSA in the US is not something you want. You're going to want to liquidate that.

RRSPs and RRIFs, maybe you keep them. RRSPs, probably not. Personal property. If nominal, you're not going to have to pay tax on it. That's a weird one, because it's hard to value. But if you have an art collection, you may blow through that pretty quickly. If there's a reason to exit out of the exemptions, you can't make an election to exit out of it. You don't want to pay the tax, you can post security. This is one of the best. If there is anything that's good about the Income Tax Act, here's one of them. You can post security and not pay interest, which is lovely. But the CRA has to agree to the security, and sometimes what they want to agree to isn't the easiest to negotiate. But people have been creative. I'm sure Trowbridge can explain some of the options that have seen the CRA has accepted. And as long as it's real security, you can usually get it through.

So there is a real property tax exemption, we noted. And I'm just seeing RRSPs again. Sometimes it's a great thing. You leave and you take it out, you're paying treaty rates, which is lovely. Because the treaty rate is often lower. And this is a good point, because I'm running out of time, to just say one thing about the treaties. The treaty rate will be less. If you pull money out of an RRSP, you pay at your highest tax rate, $0.52 on the dollar. That's if you're already in the top tax bracket. If you're in a foreign jurisdiction, you're going to pay withholding on that RRSP instead. And that rate is probably going to be less than the $0.52. So it's a nice little way to maybe save some money.

But the other thing the treaty does is interestingly, if you go to a jurisdiction with a treaty and there's a question as to where you are resident, the treaty itself-- and I meant to talked about this earlier. I don't know how I missed it. The treaty itself has a tiebreaker test. And the tiebreaker test really goes to the closer connection, which, where are you closer connected to? And if the answer is Canada under the treaty, then you're going to pay tax as a Canadian resident. If the answer is the US, or the answer is Spain, or the answer is France, then you're going to pay tax in that relevant jurisdiction based on the treaty.

But then you have to look at the country you're going to and whether or not it actually has a treaty. If anyone in this room is looking for a foreign jurisdiction, one of the things that I have to keep bringing up is if you go to the one that pops up consistently as Cayman, they do not have a treaty with Canada. So if you move down there and you have a house down there and you have house up here, and you have business down there and business up here, and all your ties, and you look at it and go, we can't tell where you're a resident, you can end up resident in two jurisdictions, which is the worst of both worlds. So you could think you're down there, but you're really up here. And you're still paying tax, but you've paid all this money to try to sever your ties to get out.

So there are a few more slides, but I really do want to be conscious of everyone else's time. And so what I would say is these slides are going to be circulated at some point after the event. And if you have questions on the balance of them, give me a shout and I'll be around after to discuss some of these as well so I can take questions then. So I'll pass it off.

DIMITRIOS ZARAVINOS: Thanks, Brian. That was an excellent summary of residency. There's a little bit of overlap, but what we'll do, I won't touch upon a lot of this stuff. But I heard a lot of maybes. Maybe, maybe, maybe. And there's an internal joke that we always say about the CRA. If you call two agents at the CRA and ask them, are you resident or not? You can get 13 different answers. They themselves don't even know. We get NR73s, and I'll explain what that is.

But every time you talk about residency, unless it's really clear cut, depending on what agent you're dealing with, you may get different answers. And that's really because, as Brian mentioned, there's nothing really in the Income Tax Act other than the sojourning 183 day rule that basically says you're a resident. All right, why are we here? I'm just curious. Why are people at this session? Are people considering moving in the next little while? Who's here looking to move overseas for retirement?

OK, that's good. Work? Yep, we got that. We've done this a long time. And effectively, people have their own reasons. Tax isn't necessarily the first thing they think about. At this time of year, it's the weather. People are just sick and tired of Canada. A lot of times, people are adventurous. They want to use a foreign base, and they want to use it to travel. And Canada is not their best place. Because if they're going to still pay tax here, they won't have money to travel.

So that's one of the things we're looking at, residency. If you want to ceasefire residency effectively, you want to stop paying taxes in Canada as much as you can so you can fund your retirement. And just to give you some examples-- and I'm just going to use the United States as an example. Just say you make $100,000 or $150,000 a year. Canada's tax rate-- you know what the marginal tax rate on just $150,000? In Canada, it's 43%. They'll take 43% of your money income tax. Whereas in the US, the marginal tax rate is 22% at that point.

If you move up and you get a lot of high net worth individuals that are still working overseas and make $800,000, Canada's top rate, just over $250,000 is 53%. At $800,000, you're paying 50% of every cent you made to Canada. Whereas in the US, you're paying 28%. Now, when you're making your decision, where should I retire-- the US, if I'm a resident there and I'm making money or I'm still working, other countries like Singapore, some of them have different programs, 15%. You make $800,000 in Canada, your net tax is $400,000. You make $800,000 in Singapore and there's a special regime, you're just paying $120,000.

The difference is close to 4-- sorry, you're paying 385 in Singapore versus 414. I got that wrong. Anyway, the difference is $400,000 is in your pocket. You can go to Dubai, and you don't pay any tax. You can save the whole $800,000. So you can imagine earning about $70,000 a month or $35,000, $40,000 a month. It's a big difference.

And the reason I'm saying this, it all stems in residency. It's just people are just fed up of tax. We have now a vacancy tax in Canada, and I'll talk about that as well. So really, all these taxes I'm talking about is that you want to sever ties to Canada so you don't pay tax on your income earned overseas. You still pay tax at Canadian source income. But I'll go through what-- I won't touch too much about severing ties. Brian did an excellent job of that.

But what does it mean if you still have a house in Canada? There's special filings. How do I get out of the Canadian tax system? What if I'm still getting a pension? I'm retiring. Can I still get a pension? Can I get it delivered overseas? These are some of the questions we get every single day. Oh, I'm already living in Spain. I didn't know I had to sever my ties to Canada. I didn't even file anything in Canada. I didn't know I had to. This process is to mend value returns.

And then you're overseas. You're working or you're retiring, and you decide to come back to Canada. Your family here has grandkids and you want to come back. What do you do? What are the things to look out for? So these are the things we have to be conscious of. And just all around residency, but there's so many different questions about the pensions and overseas income, rental properties, what to do with your home.

So the thing is the CRA is really looking at these situations, a lot of cross-border issues. They're targeting people and their assets. They never really looked at it so closely they are now. If you try and claim foreign tax credits, every single one, they're going to query it. Did you pay tax overseas on your rental property? Well, we're not going to allow the foreign tax credit if you're paying in Canada, unless we see proof. In the past, they just want to see a copy or tax return.

Assets, they're focusing on. There's a form called the T1135. If you're a resident in Canada and you have foreign assets, most likely you have to report them on this form. They want to know about them. When you leave Canada, there's special forms. T1161's where you need to file, showing your departure tax or assets that you held when you depart in Canada. In the past, long time ago, people just sold their principal residence. Really didn't do anything. Now there's new requirements to report. And you forget to report that form, it's $8,000 penalty for you. And if your spouse is jointly on title, $16,000 penalty just for one form.

And then they're looking at people overseas. Send money overseas back and forth. Transfers over $10,000 or more get reported to FINTRAC. And they may question, oh, what are you doing overseas? Are you working? You haven't reported anything in Canada, and we still see that you're a resident. So they're doing a lot of tracks. A lot of different things to try and track you.

The changes. The principal residence exemption disclosure. I'll go through this quickly. There's in that form, that change. The T2091 that you need to report. There's a voluntary disclosure program that's offered that if you did make an honest mistake, you may get hit with huge penalties. If you voluntarily disclose it before they're on to you, then you can potentially waive those penalties.

And now this is the big thing. There's a focus on vacant homes and non-resident speculation tax. You own a home in Canada. You've owned it since 1970. You've worked hard to pay it off. And now you go overseas to Spain, and you're still a resident in Canada or you're non-resident Canada. If you keep it vacant, then you're going to pay. In Vancouver, they have the BC speculation tax. They have the Vancouver tax. You can pay up to 5% of the value of your home, a million dollar home, which is below the average in Vancouver. Every year, you're going to pay $50,000.

You say, well, it's my family's thing. They have special rules. Because you're not reporting, you're considered untaxed. If your family members aren't BC residents or have a certain income threshold, they have to earn at least three times the fair market value of the rent. You still pay that 3% vacancy tax. $30,000 a year just for-- they say it's a vacant home. So they're really focusing on and they're trying to curb the housing prices, and that's why they're doing that. But it's really having a negative effect for people like you going overseas.

OK. Common primary, secondary ties. I don't want to go into too much detail. Again, Brian did an excellent job. One thing I do want to mention is if you were to phone the CRA, and a lot of people say, well, how do I get out of the tax system? Am I a resident or not? And you phone the CRA. They're going to say, well, fill out an NR73 form. You can Google this form. It's a four-page form, and it goes through all the primary ties Brian was talking about and all the secondary ties.

Do you have a home? Where's your spouse? Do you have gym memberships? Do you have religious memberships? Business cards. They go into details. Do you even have a safety deposit box in Canada? And they're trying to figure out your residency status. One thing I recommend-- never file this form unless you're formally requested. It's not just our policy. I work for two out of the big four accounting firms. It's the same policy for them.

CREW: My slide deck.

DIMITRIOS ZARAVINOS: Yeah, exactly. We don't even want to really, but I'm putting it there in case you call and they tell you, don't do it. The process is effectively you put an exit date on your tax return with all the proper forms. And if at that point they're not sure about your residency status and they ask you to fill it out, you can do that, or we can help you fill it out, because you don't want to even get one question wrong on that.

OK. Brian mentioned quickly a treaty. There's a lot of countries that have a tax treaty. And when you're going to the country that tax treaty with Canada, it's a little bit easier to sever ties. You can still have a home potentially in Canada and overseas. But if your ties are closer based on the treaty, each treaty has their tiebreaker rules. If your personal and economic ties are in the foreign country, you could still break residency to Canada, even if you don't sever all the primary and secondary ties.

Be careful. We've had a lot of cases, though, where people wanted to stay resident in Canada. They don't have much income. They like their personal credits. They're just receiving a small pension RRSPs, and they don't pay tax because of the personal credit. But they technically are family, and they lived in Australia and they spend nine months there, but they wanted to stay resident. The CRA can actually force you, because you're at a treaty country and deem you to be a non-resident. Which might kick in the departure tax rules. You lose all your benefits, and then you end up paying taxes in that jurisdiction.

So let's seize Canadian tax residency. What do you need to do? Again, Brian mentioned all the assets that you own, a lot of it may be subject to departure tax. You have a big portfolio. And you bought IBM shares, $100 a share, $900 a share, and you're leaving Canada. That $800 gain happened while you were in Canada. That's subject to departure tax. So you will pay a capital gains tax on that $800 even if you do not sell it. Canada wants their share.

Now, there are certain properties that are exempt. A house. You can't take your house with you. So when you eventually sell it, they're going to get their share. They're not too concerned about that. But just be aware that there is something called a departure tax in Canada. When you leave Canada, they prorate your personal credit. So if you're gone half the year, you only get half of them. And there's special forms you need to fill out. The 1161, they want to see all the assets that you have when you leave Canada. And then 1243 calculates the departure tax. If you forget to fill out that form, it's $2,500 penalty for you and $2,500 for your spouse if your spouse had it. Right there is a $5,000 penalty.

OK, you have a rental property in Canada. You say, well, I'm a non-resident in Canada, but I'm renting my house in Canada. That's fine. The CRA, you can do that and be a non-resident Canada. But there's different rules. Right now, if you rent your rental property, there's nothing you need to do. It's just at the end of the year. You report your income, you report your expenses. But as a non-resident in Canada, you need to appoint an agent who's a resident of Canada. Could be anybody who's resident-- mother, father, sister, sibling, anybody.

Their agent is responsible for taking 25% of the gross rent and remitting it to CRA throughout the year. Now there is waivers you can do. But the reason they want to do that is they're not going to find you in Singapore. But they will find your agent. And if you don't pay, they'll go after your agent. So when I lived in Australia, I made my dad my agent. I should have told him ahead of time, but he used to get stuff in the mail. But we never went offsite on that.

And you still need to file Canadian tax returns. So I say you're a non-resident of Canada, doesn't mean you don't have to pay taxes in Canada. This is Canadian source income. So it's Canadian rental property. You have to pay taxes in Canada and continue filing Canadian tax returns. OK.

If you sell your Canadian property, if just for example, you have your principal residence and you're a resident in Canada and you sell it, you don't pay tax on your principal residence if it was your principal residence throughout the entire time. But you do need to report on a T2091, and that's fine. You sell your million dollar home you bought in the '70s for $100,000. You have a $900,000 gain.

One of the great things in Canada, which a lot of countries don't have, is that's all tax free. You just fill out your form. But if you do it as a non-resident in Canada, the CRA doesn't know where you are. The person buying it from you doesn't know if you owe money. So your lawyer or the buyer's lawyer is going to say, well, we want to take 25% of the $1 million of the gross sales. And they'll withhold $250,000 and remit it to the CRA. You file your tax return to get that money back. Or what you can do is a clearance certificate. A certificate of coverage. A clearance certificate that basically says that, yes, I don't owe any taxes. You send it to the CRA. They stamp it and give it to your lawyer and gives it to the buyer's lawyer, and they waive that 25% withholding.

But you can imagine some people's shock when they leave Canada, go to Spain. They retire and they sell their property. They're non-residents. And all of a sudden, they sell their home. They give the keys, and they expect a million dollar check. And they only get $750,000. So just little things you need to be aware of.

I did mention, when you leave Canada, there's a lot of forms you need to file. Or you left Canada. You didn't know you were a non-resident, continue to report your worldwide income. And then realized, oh, I shouldn't have. I'm a non-resident as of January. You can go back and amend returns and get refunds. If it's been a long time, they'll charge you penalties. You forgot to file the T1161. What we say is you do it voluntarily before they catch on to you. That way, if you voluntarily say, oh, I should have been a non-resident, I forgot to file my T1161. I sold my property. I forgot to file my T2091. There's $10,000 of penalties. But I'm voluntarily doing it now.

Now they changed it. Generally, there's some requirements to do that. You have to be a year past due before you do a voluntary disclosure. You've never taken it before. It has to be complete. You have to pay your taxes ahead of time. So if you owe taxes, you pay it. And then when they accept the voluntary disclosure, you get it back. And you can no longer apply on a no name basis that you used to in the past. So you have to put your name down.

You have to disclose your accountant. And you have to make sure that this failure, that you're saying, oh, I forgot the T1161, was not intentional. And when I mean intentional, they actually look at the sophistication of the taxpayer. If you're a CPA, they're not going to be as lenient on you if you're a 80-year-old grandmother that wanted to move back to Romania. So they look at everything when they're looking at the voluntary disclosure. The biggest ones we see is people forget to file T1161 forms when they leave, or the foreign asset specification form, the T1135. And again, there's $2,500 penalties for each.

Another big one is they forget to report offshore income. They left Canada. They remained a resident of Canada because they're six months. They're still a resident. But they're working in Spain for a little bit, supply teaching. And the resident's Canada, but didn't report it. They can do voluntary disclosures to avoid the penalties.

So just finishing up. I think got a few more minutes here. People are overseas. So as I mentioned before, they're living overseas. They've severed all ties to Canada. They've been working in the UAE, for example, and now they want to come back to Canada. There's a lot of things that we advise to contact us or an advisor before you come back to Canada. As an example, people working in the UAE, they don't pay tax. That's one of the benefits. We have a lot of teachers, a lot of nurses, a lot of executives that work in Dubai, and they come back to Canada.

And Dubai pays something called end of service online. Most of the companies pay bonuses. They pay end of service premiums, and it could be up to $1 million. We've had people that delay that. They come back to Canada and get it paid a year later. They're fully taxable. They lose about half a million dollars in tax. Whereas if they got it paid out or structured a contract to have the right to pay it out before they came to Canada, then none of that would be taxable in Canada.

So we had an occasion where somebody was working in Australia. They have Australian superfunds. They're like our pensions. If you take it out over 60 years old, you're not taxed in Australia. Well, this individual landed in Canada three days later, took the money out. And it's fully taxable in Canada as a pension. So these are the things you need to plan. Again, if you're coming back from overseas and you come to Canada, just keep aware. There is the foreign reporting asset form, T1135, that you need to report certain foreign assets. So a lot of people have Isle of Man assets. They come back to Canada and they're residents of Canada. They need to at least tell the CRA what sort of assets they have if their total assets are $100,000 Canadian or more. And that's bank accounts. So if you have Swiss bank accounts, you have Isle of Man interactive brokers, you have a rental property overseas, that all needs to be reported on that T1135 form.

OK. Similar to departure tax, it's not all bad. If you're living overseas and non-taxed in the Cayman Islands, they don't tax capital gains. Singapore doesn't tax capital gains. But if you're living overseas and you bought those IBM shares at $100 a share and you come to Canada, they're worth $900 a share. And a day later, you're a resident Canada and sell it for $901. You made an $801 profit, but you're only going to pay $1 of tax. Because in Canada, you get a step up in basis. Just when you leave, it's deemed sold and repurchased. When you come back, it's deemed purchased and then sold. So it doesn't apply to all assets, but a lot of the assets, you do get that benefit. OK. And as I mentioned before, timing a bonus, stock option, severance, et cetera, is important. Do it before you become a resident of Canada.

Remote working. As Brian mentioned, if you're going to remotely work in Canada while a non-resident, make sure you don't spend more than 183 days. And there are certain people who work here just for a week. They're still withholding requirements in Canada, even though you may not eventually pay tax if you're coming from a treaty country. OK.

So effectively, just right there, what we do. Anything to do with cross-border tax, we provide pre- and post-consultation to make sure nothing surprises you. We prepared departure tax return, non-resident returns. We do rental returns for people who are already non-residents, and we can do the withholding requirements and be your agents. And of course, when you're coming back, you contact us before and we can plan to get you back into the Canadian tax system.

Right. So just in conclusion, there are a lot of complexities involved when you're doing cross-border tax. We don't have all the answers on foreign tax jurisdictions, but we can put you in touch with any-- wherever you're going in the world, we do collaborate with different firms and that have offices in those countries. And I'm just going to put in our LinkedIn and Instagram. OK, thank you.

SERGIU HIRTESCU: For all of you in the room that are not accountants and lawyers. I perfected something, a new imitation. It's called deer in the headlights. I don't know if you feel like I feel hearing all of that. It's really good knowledge. But maybe, for some of us, including myself, it's a lot, right?

So what I'm going to try to do here is not be too technical, like my colleagues, who have done excellent presentations. I've actually used Trowbridge for some of my clients. They've done excellent work for them. With Gowling, it's a new partnership. I'm hoping to be able to send some contacts to them as well. But indulge me a little bit. Is this working? No. No. That's Ernie and that's Dimitrios who were just speaking. And Ernie is right there. Yeah.

All right. So I'm just going to ask everybody to indulge me for a bit and close your eyes. Close your eyes. Everybody, close your eyes. Come on. I'm watching you to see. OK, close your eyes. Take a deep breath. It's been a lot of information. Reset.

Now keep your eyes closed. And think of that vision that you have for you. Where are you going to be in one year, two years, five years? Is it in Spain? Sipping a cappuccino? Is it in Italy with a lemoncello? Are you with your elderly parents because you want to spend as much time as possible with them in the short amount of time that you have left with them? What is your dream? Feel it. Is there sun on your face? Are you smelling the coffee?

Take another deep breath. Release it, and open your eyes. I'm here to take you through a proven process that will work to get you from where your vision is in your mind to reality. It's not easy. As you can see, there's so many different pieces. But it can be done. And my name is Serge. I'm from IG Wealth Management. I'm joined here by my colleague, Iveta Koskina. Stand up, Iveta. Make sure you talk to her afterwards, OK?

And we're very happy to be here. We're extremely excited to be here. Because Iveta and I feel that we're amongst our people here. We're not just here to tell you how we can help offer you value. We're actually looking to do this ourselves. So we're not just financial planners looking to help our clients. We're helping our clients to help ourselves, too. We live and breathe this every day.

So I'd like to start off by sharing a personal story to maybe give you a little bit of more of an insight of why I'm speaking to you all today. That's me. Four years old. Romania. 1971, I was born. And within the same year, my dad jumped ship in Canada, in Halifax. If anybody knows what jump ship means, it means running away. Literally jumping from a ship.

Why? Because Romania was not as friendly back then, and a lot of Romanians were looking to leave. And when the opportunity presented itself, he was a mechanic on a fishing trawler around the world, got to Halifax. And with nothing, no $5 in the pocket, no suitcase. Like a lot of people would like to say, he had the clothes on his back, sitting in a tree for several days, or I don't know how long until the boat left. And he went to parliament, petitioned the government of Canada to try to reunify.

So in 1975, and I still remember a very cold December, I was bundled up in my Romanian jacket parka that made me look like an Eskimo. Came to Canada. And through perseverance and through hard work, like a lot of immigrant stories, my parents raised us up from Parkdale, cockroaches and rats and everything, to the middle class to North York, Yonge and Sheppard. And I learned from them. At age nine, I had my first job as a paper route. 150 homes. Wasn't a good saver. I'd spent all my money on video games and chips and everything. But my mom taught me saving by taking some of my cash, putting it in Canada savings bonds.

Later on, when I got married, another woman entered our lives at one of the banks and taught me the value of financial planning. Which is my topic today, so this is great. We wanted to buy a house. But how? I didn't think that it was possible. We walked into a couple of banks. And when they looked at us-- especially me. I mean, I was a hard worker, but I was not a very financially astute person. I got credit cards, didn't pay them off. My debt was bad. By the time I got married, my wife was a recent immigrant. Two years, had a better credit rating than I had from four years old in Canada.

But we went to the bank. And she looked at us. She goes, if you do this, step, step, step, step, step, we can talk. Six months later, we walked in. We got pre-approved for a mortgage. We bought a house. The feeling on April 1, 1999, when I lifted up my wife and walked her over the threshold was ecstatic. And I can just imagine it was like my parents when they bought their first house. And that's when I saw the value of financial planning. Because without a plan, it's never going to happen. Do you agree?

So what led me to IG Wealth? I mean, I've had it storied. I worked for a lot of financial firms. But IG Wealth is the firm that I feel-- where's my notes? This is more of the corporate part here. Oh, yeah. That's what I wanted to say. They're big. We're pretty big. We're across the country. We have resources and tools that can help almost every single Canadian reach their goals.

And today, we're talking about becoming an expat. But I see in the house here three chambers of commerce. We got Spain, Poland, and Romania right here in the house. So if anybody wants to talk with them, they're all over here. And we have people that are in Canada from other countries that are living and working and breathing here that eventually will want to go back home. And they also need this kind of financial planning. Because they have RRSPs and pensions and so on, and they want to go back home.

So there's a lot of opportunity to craft strategic plans. We're not talking about the financial plans of our parents, which was $100,000. Let's invest it for you properly. We'll see you once a year and see if we get a decent return. That's not financial planning. Financial planning is more strategic. It's making sure that we listen to what the client is looking to do with their lives and build our plans around that.

I'm not going to say any company is flawless. I mean, if there's any self-employed people in here, I'm sure that you can always think that you can improve your own company. I'm an independent consultant, and I'm always looking to improve my offering to the people that I work with. But let's just take a moment to look at the tip of the iceberg of some of the offerings that we can provide without even touching about the parts that we can offer for businesses, companies that are looking to raise capital, to make money, and then eventually exit or expand into other jurisdictions. We're in this pile with everybody else's.

Life is unpredictable. It's filled with highs and lows. And a lot of it is driven by emotion. It's not really knowing what to do. It's easy to say A plus B-- A plus B, yeah. 1 plus 1 equals 2. C follows B sometimes. Or what we heard today may be possibly. It's also about actually doing the work. So not just knowing the data and what to do, it's putting it all together.

I'm a firm believer in planning. And I'll tell you this is a prime example. We are sitting here today because of planning. This didn't just appear that we're going to have a bunch of people in a room. Last May 2024, I thought I'd put together a small group of people, 20 or 30 people, in a nice Spanish tapas restaurant. And we started scoping the place out.

I called Ernie, which we've done-- Ernie's from Trowbridge. We've done events before. He loved the idea. Let's do it. So we sent Nushin out with Dimitrios. The three of us, we went and tasted some samples at a tapas restaurant. It was almost going to go through, then it fell through. Then we went to another place. Fell through. Another place. I said, Ernie, I'm pulling my hair out. How are we going to get this done? He said, hey, I know a guy. Brian.

So we talked to Brian. He was all on board. And so May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December-- nine months later, we're all here today. Two steps forward, one step back. And this is a nice example of what it might take to get to where you want to get to. And whether that's expat dreams somewhere, Caymans-- by the way, I think Spain is more than Cayman, at least in my circle. Most people are talking about Spain, but maybe that's just the circle I'm in.

So it's two steps forward, one step back, but it can be done. And this picture, by the way, is a picture that I took in Petra Gallego, Malaga, Espana. Did I say that properly a little bit? It's a fishing village. And it's to show you, this is one of my visions that I had when I got there. It was only the beginning of the next vision. Nushin, please feel free to kick me because I want to make sure-- OK.

So when Iveta and I initially meet to do our consultations, we often hear the same kind of questions. Like, how do I make it last? How do I protect my assets? But really, underlying every single question is, do I have enough? And it's a question that I've seen is really coming from an anxiety that, I want to do it, but what if this, what if that? And it really comes down to the fear of not being able to make sure that you're going to have that same lifestyle, protect your family. It's not just about us. We have kids, we have parents, whatever.

One of the reasons we haven't actually left and moved right now is we have elderly parents we want to take care of. We're making good incomes. But what happens if we need to have more to take care of them? So that question is really what sets people apart. You're here tonight. Thank you. It's almost everybody at capacity. There are some people that said they couldn't make it because they were sick. Some were on the road. It started to snow. The fact that you're here shows how serious you are and how committed you are.

But I will tell you from my experience-- has anybody heard of the 80-20 rule? Pareto principle? in this room, I would say maybe 10%, maybe 20% are going to get to that vision. And it's not because you're not dedicated enough. Life happens. Things happen in the way. Different things happen all the time. So it's not good or bad. But many people ask, what's the process? How do we do it?

And realistically, the first part, the discover part, the discover and clarify, I would say is almost the most important part. Because it's looking not just at what your assets are, your incomes. It's why you're doing this. And speaking with a good coach, a friend, maybe a mentor before you even talk to a financial planner. I mean, I've had discussions with my close friends and mentors, and the first thing I would say is it's going to be hard. You know how hard it's going to be? I'm like, yeah, it's going to be great. I'll be there sipping cappuccinos. It'll be fine.

But a good person will challenge you and say, do you know what's going to happen? Did you hear what we have to go through? All these forms and everything and making sure we don't get in trouble with the CRAs and all that of the world. So I want to say that it's a vision that we can all achieve if we're committed to it. When we bought our first home, that's a story I told you, we had to be committed. We had to pay down our debts, get higher paying jobs, which we did. Save more. And that's not going to happen if you're not committed to buying that house. It's not going to happen if you're not committed to actually doing this. Agreed? I think so.

So how serious are you? That's the question. Well, actually, I went a little bit too far. After discovering how serious you are and the assets, then it comes down to the data dump. Get your data. What do you have for cottage, homes, mortgages, debts? What kind of incomes are you looking to sustain yourself with? What's your expected cash flow? What are some taxes that we can look at to minimize? Then we can develop that plan together. And then we can present it, finalize it.

As a good coach, we finalize it with steps. OK, so just like when we bought the house, step one, you got to do this. Step two, you got to do that. Step three, you got to do that. This is where you come in. Actually, all of us here. We're guides. We're drawing the path in the sand for people to follow to see if they can do it. But ultimately, it's your choice.

And what I want to say being up here, is that I'm proof that it can be done, because I've been doing it. We run a masterclass, Iveta and I, for us. We have some masterclass attendees here tonight. I'm not going to point them out. It's our kick at the can of getting the information out there. And we're on session nine this Thursday. And in that class, we created an avatar couple called Mark and Mary Expat, just to walk them through the whole scenario, but not just the finances. The emotional part. The logistical part. There's emotional, logistical, and financial.

Did you know that if you want to move your pet, there are really hard rules to do that on a plane? You have to know if it's winter time. You can't even do it if the dog is too big, because they won't put it in the cargo bay. We learned all this stuff through our masterclass because people ask those questions. I learned basically also in talking with Dimitrios, I have a condo, a rental. Before I met Dimitrios years ago, I was like, oh, great. I'll have that tenant pay me the rent every month. I'll be happy. I'll have more than enough. Until I found out, oh, wait, 25%, filing every month, getting an agent.

So it's a learning curve. Learning curve for everybody. So how do you do it? because there's this vacuum now in the industry where you can go to an accountant and you get that stuff done if you know to ask the right questions and if you're willing to pay for it, right. And the same with the lawyer and same with the financial planner. But who's putting it all together?

In this case Mark and Mary in the mid '50s. Kids, universities. Taking care of them. Elderly parents. One's self-employed, one's working for the government. What do we do? Get their data. Put it into our software. Figure it out. Where all the different pieces of the puzzle are. How am I doing for time? Five minutes, good. I can run through that. Perfect.

I should go through-- this is the easy part. It's really putting all the thousands of pieces out from the air, from the ether, and putting it down on paper. And I work with a lot-- I shouldn't say-- let's say, technical people that have spreadsheets upon spreadsheets that show how much they spend. Have they calculated inflation? And so on and so forth. And it's great. It's a great start.

What it's missing is stress testing. What if something happens? What if you die young? What if you live longer? What if inflation is higher than it expected? What if the market crashes? What are some scenarios to do with your cottage? Or what if you have two kids and three properties? And how do we make sure that that's all taken care of is state-wise? Should we be opening trusts or not? These are all questions that come into play when you speak with a planner that can put this all together for you.

And I'm showing you what we've done with Mark and Mary Expat. This is just a few of the items that we talked about costs in Canada. Because one thing a lot of people may not even think about, well, there's currency fluctuations. Obviously, we know that when we go into Europe now. The dollar is not that strong against the euro. So I mean, even the bank employees are apologizing. I wanted to go to exchange and they're like, I'm so sorry for the rate. Well, it's not your fault, but we have to do what we have to do, right?

So one thing that-- it's like retiring in Canada. How much are you going to spend? Most retirees do not know how much they're going to spend even in Canada. They don't. Actually, most of the retired clients that I have, say the first two years are going to be like buffer years. Let's just see what happens. Because now, they don't have that steady paycheck, but they're also not busy all day. So they might be going to the mall, go to the grandkids, whatever. We don't know.

If you're living in Spain or Portugal, Romania, where I'm originally from, what's the cost of living there? What does it cost to get around? Are you going to walk around and buy a car? All those things are very important to think about. But not only that, what are the costs of moving there? I'm not trying to create fear. What I'm trying to say is we can put it all together.

There's a solution for the serious people that want to do this. And once that solution is done, it's presented. And hopefully, there's a circle there that's 112% or higher that says, hey, this plan looks decent. Hopefully nothing falls off, because it's not close. It's close to 100. So if anything bad happens, we might not be that OK. We prefer to see it a bit higher.

But eventually, this is not a static plan, because we know life happens. And actually, we call this the living plan. So it's living, breathing daily, weekly, monthly. Maybe a kid wants to get married and want to have a destination wedding in Mexico. We saw that when I was in December. 200 people from around the world on the beach. Wow. That was a big destination wedding. Two minutes. OK, I'm out of here.

All right. Like a good coach, we give you the plans. Let me just scroll through. What I'm trying to show you here is that no one person can do this for you. Not even yourself, no matter how smart you are. Not even me, no matter how smart I am. Or Iveta together. It's got to be collaborative.

Which is why I believe today, we've made a good team with the accountancy firm of Trowbridge, with their international tax, Gowling International Legal, and us putting it all together. With this team, you can have your golden ticket to get that vision into reality. And we definitely encourage you to speak with your own accountants and lawyers. Maybe they have something that we don't know about. It's very collaborative.

In the end, you'll have clarity, expert guidance. And this is what has happened for me with my planning from way back when. I've been to over 80 cities around the world. I enjoy my cappuccinos on cobblestone streets. I envisage that for every single one of you, whatever that vision is. I've got a 32-year-old client that wants to move to Thailand in about five years. And that's what we're working for on him.

So you're not alone on this. I'm going to skip this case. But this is an actual client that we helped with. I'm going to go straight through it. So next step. Let's make your dream a reality. That QR code simply takes you to a page where you can request a 30-minute consult. There was something important I wanted to say at the end. Do I have a minute? 30 seconds? OK.

Just want to close your eyes again. Close your eyes. Close your eyes. Close your eyes. Close your eyes. Close your eyes. Ernie, that means you, too. OK, think back to what we first envisaged. Where are we going? Breathe again. What's the next step? Open your eyes. Thank you.