“I’m curious about the process for confirming ‘My Representative’ for a foreign corporation with non-resident owner(s). As the non-resident owner(s) can’t register/log in to my business account and confirm the representative authorization, I’d appreciate guidance on how to proceed with this.”
If it is a foreign corporation, that means it is not resident in Canada, so there would be no tax liabilities except for maybe GST or withholding tax (Part XIII, I think?). I am not very familiar with non-resident tax issues, but would they even have a “normal” business number?
My guess is you could only get offline access as a representative - via the AuthRep form in TaxCycle or via RAC (printing the form, getting it signed, scanned and submitted). You may not be able to get online access, especially if the foreign owners are not able to create a CRA login.
Agreed w/@Nezzer.
Few months back I worked on a client file that was a private Canadian corporation operated by non-residents out of Europe. I spoke with CRA at that time. The agent told me that Canadian or US residents can register for CRA online services to view tax related information by setting up a MyBusiness account. OR They also have the ability to register for Represent a Client service to view online tax information.
However, if they are non-resident excluding US, unfortunately they cannot have online access. But they can have offline access to their tax information. This means they can communicate with CRA through paper mail, telephone, or fax. This requires completing CRA AUT-01 form. It must be signed by the owner/director or authorized signing officer of the company. That name must match with the name on CRA records. Once the form is completed and signed, it needs to be mailed or faxed to the designated CRA tax center. It was Winnipeg tax center in my case.
Hope it helps.
Thank you @irfan for your input.
As per CRA, HST returns can only be filed online.
How are we supposed to file an HST for a foreign company if we don’t have access to the client’s portal?
To register for “My Business Account”. the first three questions are:
-SIN (or ITN, or TTN)
-Date of birth
-Tax info from 2023 or 2022 T1
I was thinking…
For the “SIN part”, a foreign client (owner of the foreign corporation) can apply for an ITN, which is used in place of the SIN.
For the “Tax Info” part, the foreign client could file a non-resident T1 with a symbolic figure amount, let’s say, $10.00 as income.
Would this work?
Thank you so much.
@elenaburger
You don’t need online access to the MyBusinessAccount in order to file a HST return online. You can use HST Netfile (see below) - this requires only a Netfile Access Code, which you or the taxpayer should be able to obtain by calling CRA (see the link “Get a GST/HST access code”).
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