Student living out of province

[6Charlene6]

My son goes to school in Quebec and pays rent in Montreal during the school year.  He returns to his home in Ontario for the summer months.  On Dec 31 he was technically living in Quebec but I'm not sure how it works for students.  Is his principal residence in Ontario or Quebec?  His DL and Health Card are for Ontario.

[Zack1103]

His principal residence is in Ontario. Under normal conditions, a person files a tax return for the province in which they are residing on December 31 of the taxation year.  Sometimes, a person may be considered to be a resident of a province even if they have temporarily relocated to another province.  This could happen if the person was a student in a province where they do not normally reside. A person will be determined to be resident in the province in which they have the most significant residential ties.  

As per the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) Determining an Individual’s Residence Status:

1.47 For further guidance on the application of the permanent home test, the Courts have referred to the commentary on paragraph 2 of Article 4 of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Model Tax Convention on Income and on Capital. Paragraph 13 of the above-mentioned OECD commentary states in part, as follows:

“…the permanence of the home is essential; this means that the individual has arranged to have the dwelling available to him at all times continuously, and not occasionally for the purpose of a stay which, owing to the reasons for it, is necessarily of short duration (travel for pleasure, business travel, educational travel, attending a course at a school, etc).”

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