Changing Marital Status on CRA for Common-Law sponsorship

[soohee]

Hello,

I have applied PR (Outland) through common-law sponsorship last month. ( I am currently on PGWP visa and my common-law partner is a Canadian citizen).

Until this year, we've filed the tax return as single status and we didn't know that we had to update the marital status to common-law.

I wonder if that would make any problem for my PR application as it says "Single" on Option-C printout of my common-law partner.

On CRA website, it says..

If your marital status changes you must notify the CRA by the end of the month following the month in which your status changed. For example, if your marital status changed in August 2012, you must notify the CRA by no later than September 30, 2012.



I wonder if it would be ok to change the marital status now because the date we entered into a common-law relationship was 2014 December. I am worried CRA would question why we are changing a marital status too late.

Or should I wait until 2016 and file the tax return as a common-law status?

 

[DanSlh]

I changed my wife's marital status 7 months after we got married and we had no problems.

 

[Aquakitty]

Our application was approved and I did not change the status until after he landed. I don't think they check anything to do with your taxes aside from what you send them.

I was under the mistaken belief that he had to have landed as a PR before I changed up my status. So, I think it should be no problem with CIC, I can't say what would happen with CRA if you'd have to go back and fix your last year's taxes.

 

[DanSlh]

Our application was approved and I did not change the status until after he landed. I don't think they check anything to do with your taxes aside from what you send them.

I was under the mistaken belief that he had to have landed as a PR before I changed up my status. So, I think it should be no problem with CIC, I can't say what would happen with CRA if you'd have to go back and fix your last year's taxes.

I had the same toughts, what explains my "7 months after we get married".

 

[soohee]

Yea, I thought the same. I thought I had to get PR first to be able to change the marital status for CRA.

Thank you guys for the answers!

 

[Rob_TO]

I wonder if it would be ok to change the marital status now because the date we entered into a common-law relationship was 2014 December. I am worried CRA would question why we are changing a marital status too late.

Or should I wait until 2016 and file the tax return as a common-law status?

If you became common-law in Dec 2014, but you did your 2014 taxes as "single", then both of you have technically committed tax fraud.

You need to change your status to common-law effective Dec 2014, and do a re-assessment of your 2014 taxes under common-law status. Just be aware if either of you were receiving benefits (like GST payments) that you qualified for as "single" but wouldn't have qualified for under your combined family income, you will be required to pay all of those back retroactive to Dec 2014.