Gurus - can you help here?

[qili]

JoeF: one word of advice - if you think you haven't embarrassed yourself enough in this thread alone, think harder.

Please learn a little bit about laws, tax laws and concise communications and then attempt a logic discussion.

But more importantly, please learn to understand the discussion before responding to it.

Thank you and have a good day.

 

[TheRealCanadian]

Being a tax resident according to some other country's laws is indeed irrelevant. Actually living in that other country is the issue. The crucial part is if you indeed live there or not.

I think we agree here. I just wanted to emphasize that filing a resident tax return doesn't necessarily imply that you live somewhere.

For non-immigrants, US tax residency implies that they have lived in the country for at least 183 days in the year.

Based on the tax treaties, I would be very reluctant to even make the implication. In the example I pointed out, a German or Canadian person could be permitted to file a 1040 if it was in their interests to do so, despite never having set foot in the US during the calendar year.

Determining residency is a complicated process. CIS would look at a variety of evidence. However, no amount of evidence can guarantee that they are ok with it. And, obtaining a foreign drivers license can indeed be one of the indicators that they use to determine if a person abandoned the GC.

That too is correct. This all reminds me of the situation with declaring Canadian non-residency for tax purposes back in the late 1990s; there were few automatic ties, but for every possible tie (like a bank account, DL, etc) one needed to be careful to accumulate evidence to counter-balance it. I think the same thing applies for US residency.

 

[bonafide]

Last thing JoeF -

You say:
"How do you "prove" that the trip is temporary? You can't."

If someone gets a reentry permit, contract for 1 year somewhere, maintains ties to the US and comes back after 1 year and then lives in the US for another 1-2 years without making trips. Would you say it is fair to say that the previous trip was temporary? The person made it back to the US as stated on reentry, maintained ties to the US while away and had a contract for that 1 year which stated that the person would be transferred back to the US.

At least logically speaking - such a trip would be considered temporary for me especially since the trip really ended (and the person resumed being physically present for 1-2 years after the trip) as it was stated for reentry application.

 

[qili]

How do you "prove" that the trip is temporary? You can't. All you can do is provide evidence.

how do you prove anything? by providing evidence to support your argument.

If providing evidence isn't a way to prove something, what else is?

Not to my knowledge

that's because there is a huge gap in your knowledge.

Find the tax code and look under the residence definition (for tax purposes) and you will know why you didn't know.

Guys, it is just a waste time tring to get advices from a guy who doesn't know the subject matter. Let's move on.