I am a displaced citizen, I am a migrant. I therefore do not completely belong anywhere.

Most migrants migrate for economic reasons. It's a fact of the human existence. It's a fact of life in the capitalist economy and it has been so for hundreds of years. A migrant could be of any color, creed or ethnicity.

Migrants are useful. They provide cheap labor, scapegoats, remittances, extra taxation, niche markets, songs and poetry. Countries such as Canada have been formed in part by migrants and have come to be dependent on them. 

Today, the liberalization and deregularization of international trade and investment has created a tangle of law and bureaucracy, so much so that deciding who belongs where has become confusing. In playing to criminality, they have caused the spread of criminality and have become victims of it. The Canadian government is both afraid and confused for that reason.

Take Canadian English teachers living and working abroad. Even where tax treaties have been created and signed in order to sort out residency and tax obligations, the Canadian government remains afraid and confused. That is why they have been illegally doubly taxing thousands of propertyless low-paid teachers of English who live and work in the Republic of Korea year after year.

The Convention (casually referred to as a tax treaty, for that is basically what it is) between the Republic of Korea and Canada was created so as to avoid double taxation. Article 4 clearly sets forth how to decide whether one is a resident of Korea or Canada for the purposes of taxation. The national tax experts HR Block back this up as well as the text of the Convention itself. Yet, Canadian tax authorities are prone to ignoring it and using standard non-treaty measures of residency for taxation, probably out of paranoia about foreign income from business and tax fraud. 

Therefore, it takes a lot of convincing to get Canadian tax authorities to back off and refrain from double-taxing the non-real estate owning worker abroad in Korea and other countries that have tax treaties with Canada. I have been trying to convince them for several years.

When I first made a tax return in 2008 for the tax year 2007, information on international tax returns was hard to get. I found the tax department staff to be less than helpful. In fact, they were quite confused. Instead of referring me to the international tax authorities of Canada and the relevant forms, they assessed my T1 (standard personal income tax return form) and concluded that I, a Canadian citizen resident in Canada who had filed every year consistently all my previous adult years,  was a resident of Canada who must pay taxes on my Korean employment income, and a non-resident who did not qualify for any deductions. How amazing! 

I immediately objected. A lawyer of the tax office answered all my objections, who quit and was replaced. The debt was eventually chiseled down since the deductions were eventually allowed and a foreign tax credit was applied, but he still insisted that I should  be taxed on my employment income in Korea. Yet, the new lawyer on the case acknowledged I was living abroad and did not dispute my situation of employment and long term life in South Korea, and even commenced communicating with me by mail and direct telephone calls. I continued to argue with him and he finally admitted verbally over the phone that I was right and should not be taxed on my Korean income. Hooray! 

To establish that decision, he asked for some document from the tax authorities stating that I was a resident who paid taxes on income in Korea over the period in question. Problem: getting such a document back in '08. As the mail forwarding from my postal service in Canada was delayed, and I did not forward the required document within three months, the file was closed without any announcement and I was again billed. 

Meantime, I could not get any information about tax records in Korea as the support in English language was lacking. I did, however, obtain an immigration records showing all my comings and goings.

I then made another objection, which required making a case to the Tax Court of Canada in Ottawa. Fortunately, one can apply for an informal hearing free of charge. That is what I did. As the previous lawyer left the position, another lawyer replaced him and started the paperwork. There were strange delays and I received numerous confirmations that I had opted for an informal hearing at all my mailing addresses over a period of about 10 months. When the new lawyer finally contacted me, it was like starting from scratch. She ignored the tax treaty and seemed not to know anything about using a tax document from the foreign state to prove residency. We went round in circles, with months of silence between rounds. They wanted to know my argument and hounded me for it with numerous letters (signed by new lawyers replacing previous ones).

The hearing was not set until January, 2011, which I was able to have rescheduled to the summer when I would have time to travel to Canada. At the hearing, I was never invited to speak and make my argument. Instead, the judge began with a secondary  issue, an oustanding minor issue of a domestic return in an earlier year. That question settled (to my favour) in much more time than it should have taken until I was drained, he then began to give me a residency test in roundabout fashion, asking me standard but stray questions pertaining to the Canadian government's determination or residency in cases where no tax treaty exists. Despite my key argument presented in my documents underlining the existence of the tax treaty, he never once referred to it. The government defense lawyer, meanwhile, presented a huge binder full of mostly irrelevant documentation except the full text of the tax convention between the Republic of Korea and Canada. The judge did criticize the government lawyer for overkill and for the tax department failing to apply the tax credit, but he left saying I was a resident who should pay tax on my 2007 foreign employment income. Astounding! 

No formal ruling was ever passed, however, as it appears. I never received one, though I phone to request it and made sure they used my mailing address in Korea. I believe the judge realized he had made an error, and simply remained neutral by not finalizing the judgement.

This huge expense of the taxpayers money, which surely amounted to much more than the taxes allegedly owed, and all the fuss could have been avoided had the tax authorities just noted the original mistakes and reprocessed the 2007 tax claim, but they seem to want to complicate things and play guessing games. They could help the citizen and tell people the proper procedures. That would require their own staff knowing the procedures, of course.

After that, I got advice from HR Block, who said the determination of residency for the purpose of taxation is quite simple and done by implementing the tax treaty (aka Convention between ROK and Canada). They advised me to get the residency determination forms and complete one for each year in order to prepare tax returns for subsequent years absent from Canada.

I did so and found that the residency determination forms have been improved. They have even placed check boxes for applicants to indicate whether they have been getting income from a country that has a tax treaty with Canada, and a section asking whether your income has been from a foreign employer. I thought the matter would be cleared up and processing straightforward this time round. Not so.

Incredibly, the reply was that they thought I was a resident of Canada for taxation purposes. Fed up, I wrote to the Finance Minister of Canada and  to the international tax office objecting again and quoting Article 4 of the ROK-Can Convention and HR Block advice. Within a month, I had a reply from the tax office full of gobbledygook saying they were correct after all and that the original decision still stood, but that I could submit a record from the tax authorities of Korea showing residency and income tax paid to Korea if I wanted to prove I was a resident of Korea and avoid being taxed by Canada. I won! 

I got the document from the South Korean national tax authority, which is called a Certificate of Income just two days ago. It has to be translated professionally in order to be accepted by Canada, but I sent it off to the Canadian international tax office right away regardless, with a note explaining that I would submit the original and translation later.

I came across another problem: the two hagwons I worked for in 2007 and 2008 never paid income taxes to the Korean government! Shit!

Underpayment and mistreatment of its foreign staff was the reason why I and my other colleagues from Canada wanted to escape Kids Club in Masan. It's the reason why I set up the TEA-KOR and FREED helplines and support networks.

Regarding my current tax predicament, Kids Club completely mislead me because the employment contract vowed that taxes would be deducted as per the law and they provided false pay stubs all along showing that income tax was deducted. Well, they took my money but did not pay the taxes to the government.

As for the second academy, GnB in Masan, I knew that they were trying to accomplish tax fraud and did not want to register me with the government authorities. However, I insisted that I get on the medical and pension plans and pay income tax for several months. The poor go-between was run ragged in this fight. Eventually, she was told that I was on the government plans and given phony electronic pay stubs showing calculations of pay deductions. Again, the employer took the money but did not pay the government. GnB did not even report me as an employee, for the tax record shows nothing on my file for all of 2008!

Now I am dredging up old contracts, pay stubs and correspondence and writing letters to the tax authority and the Finance Minister of Canada to convince them that payments intended for income tax payments were indeed deducted from my pay in 2007 and 2008, and that I therefore should not pay again to Canada. 

Migrant workers of any type constantly face exploitation, harassment and discrimination. They are told they are lowly and that they do not belong. They must pay and pay again and again.

It's easy to distinguish big-time and corrupt business players from honest workers. Sure, there are dishonest workers and false reports by migrants, because the situation creates them. That said, governments can easily process migrants for various purposes in straightforward ways and sort out the debts and services. 

Ed Wise