Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Korussian]

My girlfriend and I didn't do our taxes for 2007 in Canada as we should have, as the Korean Tax Office said we didn't get some form while we were still in Korea, and wouldn't agree to send us an income statement unless we showed up in person, in Korea, to retrieve said form.

Fine.

Today we went to the local National Tax Service Office (NTS) to get whatever forms in order to request our official 2007 income statement to give to Canada Revenue, only to be told that Korea is completely missing any record of our 2007 filing.

We had the tax agent call our former boss, and she said that they properly filed it a few months ago, in August, and she's washing her hands of it. I can't blame her, since I think they probably did file our taxes (we did receive our pensions refunds properly, after all).

The tax office just doesn't have our records in their computer system. They should, right? Assuming our former employer is telling the truth, the onus is on the tax office to produce an accurate income statement for us, right?

Has anybody had this happen? Do you have advice about how we can file our taxes in Canada without providing an official tax statement from NTS?

Are we going about this all wrong?

Thanks in advance!

[frankhenry]

[Countrygirl]

Just curious, are you planning on paying taxes to CRA on income earned here? If you have no ties to Canada, you shouldn't have to pay. I believe that you don't have to file your taxes if you have nothing to declare in Canada (but look this up yourself...I'm not at this point myself).

In regards to not having a tax form from Korea, if you have your pay stubs, that will do just fine. If you don't have pay stubs, an estimation will be acceptable. You can include a note with an explanation. If you are audited, the CRA auditor would only make you pay taxes on your deemed income so a reasonable estimation, I'm sure, would be accepted. But calling CRA would be your best course of action. (by the way, it's always prudent to keep a record of the CRA agent's name and the date that you called.)

[jellobean]

Make sure you are going to the right office.

Also, try taking you pay stubs down to the local -gu tax office. Those folks there should be able to find you based on your ARC. If they can't, they will call and hassle your old employer for you.

[Korussian]

Thanks for your replies.

Last year was our first time in Korea, hence our lunacy of not forcing our (public) employer to give us pay stubs. We tried to get non-residency status in Canada in order to avoid paying taxes on Korean income, but CRA wouldn't give it to us, since we didn't know our Korean address yet when we applied from Canada. We will try again this time.

We got our former manager to fax us a document in Korean which actually contains the names and pay amounts of all the teachers that worked for our employer, including ourselves. The document is not signed or otherwise marked to indicate it's really from our former employer, and, of course, everything is in Korean. Our former boss refused to give us anything signed or official, saying "it's not my obligation".

My girlfriend said that the CRA agent she spoke with said we need an official Korean Government form listing our income (in the absence of pay stubs), but I'll call CRA again tonight to confirm.

Thanks again!