Domicile

As well as applying to residents of Canada and the UK, the Canada-UK treaty applies to a person who is domiciled in the UK and subject to tax there.

So…..what is domicile.

There is no precise or agreed definition and the argument is often taken to court.  The UK revenue and customs office defines a number of definitions of domicile:

When you are born, you have the domicile that your parents did at that time (not necessarily where you are born) this is called the domicile of origin.

A child under the age of 16 has the domicile of their parent

You can be domiciled where you have a permanent home where you are planning on returning.  Notice there is no requirement for years here.  One court case decided that although a man had lived in the UK for 40 years he always planned on returning to Canada and therefore his domicile was Canada.

If you plan to live permanently in another country you can have a domicile of choice.

If you leave your domicile of choice and do not decide to live somewhere else permanently then your domicile returns to your domicile of origin.

Despite all the different definitions, you may only have one domicile at a time.

Many of the court cases on domicile use the same rules as Canada for residence - basing the decision on the ties that a person keeps with the country he leaves.  These ties often include things like bank accounts, social groups and driver's license.