Specified foreign property T1135

Hi:
For the T1135, I am little stumped on this one. My client bought so many stocks on a non-registered account last year, I asked him to see if he can get a report from the brokerage firm to list all the non Canadian Corporation, he never had to file the T1135.

If he can’t come up with a portfolio report, to differentiate CAD and foreign, is there a better to check or just have to go over it one by one.

Thanks

He will have monthly or quarterly brokerage statements (ether mailed to him or online).

The statements will show stocks held and traded in Canadian Funds (Canadian Account) and stocks held and traded in US funds (US Account).

It’s only the stocks denominated in US dollars, or the US side of the account that need to be reported. If the brokerage doesn’t provide a nice breakdown for T1135 purposes the monthly statements are your next best option.

But there are Canadian Companies listed on the US stock exchange too, so those shouldn’t be foreign property, would it not? Like Enbridge, and shoplifty

Taxtips.ca taxtips.ca/filing/foreign-asset-reporting.htm

Canadian Companies Traded on Foreign Stock Exchanges

There are many Canadian companies traded on foreign stock exchanges. Make sure you don’t include these as foreign investments (specified foreign property). Just because an investment is held in a US$ brokerage account doesn’t mean that it is a foreign investment. For instance, some people may want to hold Barrick Gold or Thomson Reuters in a US$ broker account because their dividends are paid in US$, although they are traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) and are Canadian corporations. They are not foreign investments.

However, shares of a Canadian corporation which are held in a brokerage account outside of Canada are considered specified foreign property.

That’s exactly what I see happening, many Canadian companies in the US stock exchange, trading in US fund, on his portfolio, I was hoping to see if there would be some kind of indicator that tells it’s a foreign corporation, on those not so well known companies

Ask the broker for the foreign reporting forms. They all have this automated these days , and that’s all I ever use to determine 1) if they even need a T1135, and 2) what level of detail is required. When the T1135 first came out, the brokers had to manually generate the information, but they soon automated the process. I really don’t see the benefit to CRA of completing these forms. If the client uses a broker (and I have none who don’t), all income, buys, and sells are reported to CRA on a T-slip of one sort or another. So, the opportunity to hide foreign property/income is nil in this case. None of my clients buy outside their broker. And, none of them own a rental property in Florida.

My client didn’t use a broker, it’s a self directed investment account, and I looked at his holding online, it does have a statement of account, but only a listing of all the shares in CAD and US

Below is what is listed on Questrade…which clearly states they do not provide the info to complete the T1135. I prepare a lot of tax returns for clients with large portfolio’s and yes most brokers do provide a report to complete the T1135 however, as you can see below that is not the case for all.

The lazy ****'s. I guess it’s all about their bottom line. No need to spend the money to have a report written. After all, it’s probably not a deal breaker for customers.

Well, I guess will just have to pick out the obvious ones, and go from there. Even if the T1135 included properties that are not foreign properties, there shouldn’t be a penalty for the erroneous inclusion.

I attended a course on this a few years ago and was told rather overreport than underreport. At least if your client’s Max cost in the year is under $250k, you don’t have to provide the details. It’s a tough call if you’re hovering right around that limit though. Good luck.

What brokerage is he using? I checked with WealthSimple & got a corrected reply after I questioned his first answer that said only non Registered accounts over 100k Cdn cost would be issued (Below). Sometimes you just have to ask through the support.

2nd reply:
It appears that if you hold foreign assets in a non-registered account you will have a foreign asset report generated for you automatically on the last day of March during tax season. They are not just for those over $100K in assets as I previously stated. Additionally, we in the support department can generate one for you upon request, I just confirmed this using my personal Wealthsimple account to be sure.

Hope that clears things up! As before if I can clarify anything further do let me know.

Cheers,
Colin
The Wealthsimple Team

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This may be a case of (not) getting what you (don’t) pay for. Other discount brokerages do provide the T1135 data for self-directed accounts.

It’s TD, I called them myself, I was told there should be something like that, under tax document package, but I don’t see it there, only T5 issued shown. I told my client to deal with his bank to see if they can come up with something.

It’s an information return, so I am not going to be overly concerned about it, as long as one is filed, worse is over reported some shares,

TD definitely provides Foreign Asset information. Client can go online to his account / documents / tax documents and it’s typically called TaxPack or similar, depending on the type of account. I’ve had lots of them.

Your question has been answered already by someone in the business. Hang on till the reports are generated.

Yes, Thanks to the valuable response from everyone. Just so anyone else have this same problem, it is actually available online under tax document, but for some reason, the bank combined all the tax information, like T5, T5008, and the foreign properties, into 1 pdf, and called it T5, I opened it, but it’s like 50 pages long, so I didn’t look at every single page, and it’s actually the second last page that had that info.

That is how TD reports T5s …it’s kind of an all-in one. Most of the reporting is simply the dividend transactions, by date, with the T5 at the end and the Foreign Value Report. Some explanatory pages are stuffed in the middle.