Record an owner who lives outside Canada

If you collect rent for an owner who lives outside Canada, the Canada Revenue Agency treats you as the withholding agent. That means the CRA looks to you for the tax that should have been withheld from their rent, not to the owner. The first step is simply recording who those owners are.

Tooling, not tax advice. You decide what to withhold and you file with the CRA, not Wealthru.

What this does, and what it does not do

Recording the answer stores a fact. Once an owner is recorded as a non-resident, Wealthru also works out how much you should hold back each month and when it is due (see below), and it can record an approved Form NR6 that changes what that 25% is charged on.

It stops there. Wealthru does not hold money back, does not send anything to the CRA, and does not change any rent, statement or payout. The figures are yours to act on.

Where to find it

Open the property, go to Managers, and find the Owners and ownership panel. Each owner is listed by their legal name, with their email underneath, and has a small tax residency chip beside the name.

If you do not see the chip, the feature is not turned on for your account yet, or your plan does not include the CRA tax package.

What the chip means

• Not recorded means nobody has answered the question for that owner. Wealthru assumes no withholding until you do. It never shows "Resident" for an owner you have not answered for.
• Resident of Canada means you recorded them as a resident. No Part XIII withholding applies.
• Non-resident means Part XIII withholding applies to the rent you collect for them.

Record an answer

1. Select Tax residency beside the owner.
2. Choose Resident of Canada or Non-resident of Canada.
3. For a non-resident, enter their legal name as it appears on their tax slip, and their country as a three letter code such as PRT for Portugal or USA for the United States.
4. Add the date they became a non-resident if you know it, and their address outside Canada.
5. Name the withholding agent. That is usually you or your company. Add the agent's CRA non-resident account number if you have one.
6. Select Save tax residency.

The answer is about the person, so it applies to every property they own with you.

About the tax identification number

You can record an owner's ITN, SIN or foreign tax number so it is ready for their slip later. Many non-residents do not have one, and that is normal.

Wealthru shows this number back only as its last three digits, so nobody reading the page over your shoulder or looking at a screenshot sees the whole thing. That has two consequences worth knowing:

• Leaving the box empty when you save keeps the number already on file. It does not erase it.
• To remove a stored number, tick Remove the stored number and save.

See how much to hold back each month

Once an owner is recorded as a non-resident, their tax residency panel shows a Part XIII schedule underneath the form. One row per month:

• Rent received is your share-adjusted total of the rent that actually reached you for this owner on this property that month. It counts payments you recorded as received, less any refunds. Rent that was charged but never paid is not in it, because the tax applies to rent that is paid.
• Deducted shows what came off before the rate was applied. On a gross month it reads None, because nothing is deducted there as a matter of rule, not because we found no expenses.
• Held back on says which figure the 25% was applied to for that month. Gross rent is the normal case. Net rent appears only for a year where you have recorded an approved Form NR6, and it means the rent less the deductible expenses in the row beside it.
• To hold back is 25% of whichever figure the row says it used.
• Send by is the 15th of the following month. If the 15th is a weekend the date shown moves to the Monday. It does not move for statutory holidays, so check the calendar if the date falls near one.

A month where no rent arrived shows $0.00, not a blank. That is the difference between "nothing was due" and "we do not know".

Two things worth understanding about the numbers

They follow your records as they stand today. If you record a refund next month against a payment from this month, this month's figure will change. That is correct arithmetic, but it means the schedule is not a record of what you actually sent the CRA. Record each remittance in the log below, so the two can be compared.

A tax treaty can change the rate. Wealthru applies the standard 25% and does not decide treaty questions. If you believe a treaty applies to this owner, work the rate out with your advisor.

Tooling, not tax advice. You decide what to withhold and you file with the CRA, not Wealthru.

Withhold on net rent instead of gross with Form NR6

Withholding 25% of gross rent is hard on an owner whose property barely breaks even, because the tax can be more than the profit and they only get the excess back when they file. Form NR6 is the CRA's answer. Once the CRA approves it, you withhold 25% of the owner's estimated net rental income for that year instead.

It only counts once the CRA has approved it. Filing an NR6 changes nothing on its own. Until the approval arrives, keep holding back 25% of the gross rent.

Electing NR6 obliges the owner to file. They must file a Section 216 return for that year, within six months of the year end. Tell them before you file the form together.

Record one

1. Open the owner's Tax residency panel and scroll to Form NR6.
2. Enter the tax year the election covers. One election covers one year.
3. Choose the CRA decision. Leave it on Waiting on the CRA while you are still waiting.
4. When the approval arrives, choose Approved by the CRA, enter the date on the letter, and confirm that the agent has undertaken to remit. Both are required, because an approval with no date and no undertaking is a record you cannot defend if the CRA asks about it.
5. Add the CRA reference from the letter if there is one.
6. Select Save NR6 election.

The schedule above updates straight away. Months in the approved year switch to Net rent and every other month stays on gross.

What counts as a deductible expense here

The estimate is the rent you collected less your operating expenses for the month, such as repairs, utilities, insurance, condo fees and management fees.

Capital costs are not deducted. A new roof, a renovation or anything else you recorded as a capital improvement is left out, because capital is claimed over years through capital cost allowance rather than as a cost of the month. Leaving it in would make the tax look smaller than it is, and the shortfall would be yours to pay.

A month whose estimated net comes out at zero or below holds back nothing. It never produces a credit against the CRA.

Correcting an election

Saving the same year again replaces that year's record, so a decision that changes from waiting to approved is one record, not two. If you approved it by mistake, set it back to Waiting on the CRA and the approval date is cleared with it. A mis-typed year is a different filing, so record the right year separately.

Tooling, not tax advice. You decide what to withhold and you file with the CRA, not Wealthru.

Record what you actually sent, and reconcile it

Under the schedule there is a Remittances and Section 216 section. Enter the month the payment covers, the year, the amount you sent, the date you sent it, and any reference the CRA or your bank gave you. Select Save remittance.

Recording a remittance does not move any money in Wealthru. It writes down something you already did.

Reading the comparison

Each month shows three things: what the schedule says you owed, what you recorded sending, and the difference.

• Matches means the two agree.
• Less than the schedule means the amount you recorded is below what the schedule now says.
• More than the schedule means it is above.

A difference is not automatically a mistake. The owed figure follows your records as they stand today, so a refund you record in November lowers what October owed, even though October was remitted correctly at the time. Treat a difference as something to look at, not as proof of an error.

Correcting a month

Saving the same month again replaces that month's record. One month has one remittance, because one month is one obligation. If you entered the wrong month, record the right one.

The NR4 slip at year end

If you paid rent to an owner outside Canada during a calendar year, you file an NR4 information return by March 31 of the following year: one slip for each of those owners, plus a summary.

Open Tax package and select NR4 slips for owners outside Canada. Pick the year at the top.

One slip covers one person, not one property. If an owner holds a share in three of your properties, their slip shows the total rent you paid them and the total tax you held back across all three. The Properties figure on the slip tells you how many fed it.

An owner you paid nothing in the year gets no slip at all, rather than a slip reading zero. There is a difference between "nothing to report" and "we report that we paid you nothing", and only the first is true.

The codes are yours to choose

Every slip has an income code and, if a treaty exemption applies, an exemption code. Wealthru leaves both blank and does not choose them for you. They are tax classifications rather than arithmetic, and the return is filed under your name, so take them from the CRA's NR4 guide for the income you paid. Enter them on the slip and select Save codes.

The recipient type says whether the slip is made out to an individual, a corporation or something else. That one is also yours to set.

Getting the figures out

Select CSV to download the slips for the year. The export is the one place the owner's full tax number appears. Everywhere on screen it is shown as its last three digits only, so nobody reading over your shoulder or looking at a screenshot sees the whole thing, but a file you send to your accountant would be useless without it.

What Wealthru does not do

The page is a draft for a human to review. Wealthru does not file the NR4 return and does not send anything to the CRA. The figures come from the payments and expenses you recorded, so they are only as right as those records are.

If you cannot see the page

The NR4 return covers the whole account. If you manage specific properties rather than the account, you will see an explanation instead of the slips, because a return covering only your properties would understate what the account actually paid. Ask an account owner to produce it. You can still see the withholding schedule for each property you manage.

Tooling, not tax advice. You decide what to withhold and you file with the CRA, not Wealthru.

Who can do this

Account owners and property managers. Owners and tenants cannot see or change these records, because the withholding duty is the agent's, not the owner's.

Reminders for the dates that matter

You do not have to remember the dates. Once an owner is recorded as a non-resident, Wealthru surfaces three things on its own.

A remittance that is short. If the schedule says more should have gone to the CRA for a month than your remittance log records, that month appears on the property's Key dates panel as "Remittance due", dated the 15th of the following month, and on your dashboard as an insight. The oldest short month is the one you are shown, with a count of any others.

The reminder names the owner, not just the property. If two non-resident owners share one property, each has their own withholding figure, because each is their own share of the rent. The row says which of them it is about.

A difference is not automatically a mistake. The schedule figure follows your records as they stand today, so a payment or a refund recorded later can change a month you already remitted on correctly. The reminder offers both readings and picks neither: record what you sent, or check the month.

An NR6 year running out. An approved Form NR6 covers one calendar year. From January 1 of the next year, withholding goes back to 25% of the gross rent unless the CRA approves a new one. Wealthru shows you that date and what changes.

It does not tell you when the next NR6 has to be filed. That deadline is the earlier of January 1 and the day your first rent payment of the year is due, and which one applies depends on your leases and your own arrangements. Wealthru will not guess at a date you could miss.

The NR4 return. From two months before March 31, your dashboard says the return is coming and how many owners are recorded as non-residents. It does not say how many slips there will be, because that depends on what you actually paid each of them during the year. The link takes you to the page that answers it.

When the reminders do not appear

• The feature is off for your account, or your plan does not include the CRA tax package. The reminders use the same two switches as every other screen here.
• Nobody is recorded as a non-resident. No obligation, no reminder.
• Nothing is short. A month where the log matches the schedule is not surfaced, and neither is a month where nothing was owed and nothing was sent. An empty property does not generate twelve reminders a year.
• For the NR4 return only: if your access is limited to certain properties, you will not see the reminder. The NR4 page itself is account-wide and is not available to you, so a prompt to open it would lead somewhere you cannot go.

What comes next

The monthly schedule, the NR6 election, the NR4 slips, the remittance log, the Section 216 comparison and the reminders are all built. The non-resident tax package is complete.