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Page 1 of the Canadian T1 asks, "Enter your province or territory of residence on December 31, 2019." If I emigrated from Canada during 2019, what do I enter, and why? Specifically, are there government instructions or a law-based explanation for what to enter?

For background, here are the sources I already looked at:

The CRA's instructions for that field say:

Enter the province or territory where you lived or of which you were considered to be a factual resident on December 31, 2019.

I don't think "factual resident" applies: an emigrant is not a factual resident, and my question is spefically about an emigrant.

The CRA's guide for Leaving Canada (emigrants) says, "For the tax year that you leave Canada, use the income tax package for the province or territory where you resided on the date you left Canada." But it does not say to what to enter for "residence on December 31."

Another page in the T1 tax package says, "If you emigrated from Canada during 2019, use the income tax package for the province or territory where you resided on the day you left Canada." But again, it doesn't say to write that province as your "residence on December 31."

The UFile tax software gives additional instructions:

If you emigrated from Canada in 2019, select the province / territory where you lived on the date you left Canada.

Using UFile, there seems to be no way to get a province's tax package without also listing it as your residence on December 31. UFile seems to consider which tax package to use and province of residence on December 31 one and the same. Another help text on UFile's website says:

When a person emigrates from Canada, December 31 is considered the day that he or she left the province or territory where he /she resided.

(Does this sentence mean that the definition of "December 31" changes for emigrants? That all emigrants are considered to have left on December 31?)

But I'm wondering how UFile got to this conclusion, because I can find no similar instructions from a government source (nor from other non-government sources).

Assuming UFile is right that emigrants should indicate their old province as their "residence on December 31", where do these instructions come from?

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I think you're overthinking probably the simplest part of the whole problem.

The first Ufile quote does not disagree with the CRA quote.

Nor does the second alter things.

On the day you left you were a resident of a province or territory. You don't magically become a resident of another province or territory between that date and the end of the taxation year (which is the end of the calendar year for people).

Keep in mind that severing for tax purposes ties to Canada is a bit complex.

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  • Thanks! Do you have a source to support your answer? That's really what I'm looking for ("where do these instructions come from?")
    – Lack
    Commented May 29, 2020 at 23:13
  • By the way, language like "getting into a tizzy" seems a bit patronizing and too personal for Stack Exchange. I'd suggest editing the answer to focus on the content, not the person.
    – Lack
    Commented May 29, 2020 at 23:15
  • It's true that the quotes don't disagree with each other. The quotes are just there to share my research and how it didn't answer the question (per the asking instructions). I've edited the question to clarify.
    – Lack
    Commented May 30, 2020 at 17:27

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