How to Fill Out CRA Form RC519: Declaration of Tax Residence for Entities

CRA Form RC519, the Declaration of Tax Residence for Entities, is a self-certification your entity gives to a Canadian financial institution to declare where it is a tax resident, classify what kind of entity it is, and — if it is a passive entity — identify the people who ultimately control it. You submit it to the bank, insurer, or investment firm that asked for it, not to the Canada Revenue Agency. The institution uses the answers to decide whether to report the account to the CRA under Part XVIII (FATCA) or Part XIX (the Common Reporting Standard) of the Income Tax Act.

Who Uses RC519

RC519 is for entities: corporations, partnerships, trusts, associations, funds, joint ventures, organizations, syndicates, and foundations. If you operate as a sole proprietor, you do not use this form. Ask for Form RC518, which is the individual version.¹p>

Your financial institution can hand you the CRA’s version or its own equivalent. A house version is fine as long as it captures the same information Parts XVIII and XIX require.² If you need a fresh CRA copy, download the fillable PDF (rc519-fill-25e.pdf) from the CRA forms page and open it in Adobe Acrobat Reader 10 or later; the fields may not work properly in a browser.³

The form has four numbered sections and an Annex. Sections 1, 2, and 4 apply to every filer. Section 3 and the Annex depend on how the entity is classified.

Section 1: Identify the Entity

Enter the entity’s full legal name, jurisdiction of incorporation or organization, and the policy or account number the financial institution assigned. Add the permanent residence address (street, city, province or state, country, and postal code). If the mailing address is different, fill in the mailing fields too.¹

Section 2: Declare Tax Residence and TINs

Tick every jurisdiction where the entity is a tax resident. The form gives three choices — Canada, the United States, and “other” — and you can tick more than one.

If you tick Canada, provide the business number or trust account number.
If you tick the United States, provide the U.S. taxpayer identification number.
If you tick “other,” list each jurisdiction and its taxpayer identification number in that jurisdiction’s official format.

A TIN is whatever unique identifier the jurisdiction uses to run its tax system: the business number in Canada, the EIN or SSN in the United States, and the local equivalent elsewhere. If the entity has no TIN for a jurisdiction you have ticked, the form offers three reasons:

Reason 1: the entity has applied for the TIN but has not yet received it.
Reason 2: the jurisdiction does not issue TINs to its residents.
Reason 3: another reason, which you must communicate to the financial institution (though writing “other reason” on the form itself is enough).

If the entity is eligible for a TIN but does not yet have one, it has 90 days from the request to apply through the jurisdiction of residence, and then 15 days after receiving the TIN to pass it along to the financial institution.¹

Section 3: Classify the Entity

This section decides whether the account gets reported and, if so, whether the institution also has to look through to the people behind the entity. Pick the first box that fits.

3.1 Financial Institution

Check this if the entity is a depository institution, custodial institution, investment entity, or specified insurance company. A Canadian-resident entity can only classify itself here if it qualifies as a Canadian financial institution. Provide the entity’s Global Intermediary Identification Number (GIIN).¹

3.2 Investment Entity in a Non-Participating Jurisdiction

A narrow category. It captures a financial institution resident in a non-participating jurisdiction that earns at least 50% of its gross income from investing or trading in financial assets and is managed by another financial institution. If this box applies, you must list controlling persons in the Annex.

3.3 Specified United States Person

If the entity is a “specified United States person” under FATCA, check this box and provide the U.S. TIN.

3.4 Non-Financial Entity (NFE)

If none of the above fits, the entity is an NFE. Pick the option that describes it:

Corporation with regularly traded stock — the entity’s shares trade on an established securities market, or the entity is related to one whose shares do.
Active trade or business — less than 50% of the entity’s gross income from the preceding fiscal year was passive income, and less than 50% of its assets produced or were held to produce passive income.²
Government body, central bank, or international organization, including entities wholly owned by them.
Other active NFE — covers holding companies for operating subsidiaries, startups less than 24 months old that intend to operate a non-financial business, entities in liquidation that were not financial institutions in the past five years, and NFEs that exist exclusively for religious, charitable, scientific, or educational purposes.¹
Passive NFE — any NFE that does not meet any of the active criteria. Ticking this box means you must complete the Annex.

The active/passive line is the one to get right. Operating businesses with real commercial activity are usually active. An entity that mainly holds investments or earns passive income (dividends, interest, rents, royalties) and does not fit an active NFE category is passive by default.

The Annex: Controlling Persons

Complete the Annex only if the entity is a passive NFE under Section 3.4, or an investment entity in a non-participating jurisdiction under Section 3.2. The Annex identifies the natural persons who exercise direct or indirect control over the entity, using a standard similar to beneficial ownership under Canada’s anti-money-laundering rules.¹

For a corporation, a controlling person is anyone who directly or indirectly owns or controls at least 25%. If nobody meets that threshold, the director or senior official is treated as the controlling person. For a trust, controlling persons include settlors, trustees, protectors, beneficiaries (or the class of beneficiaries), and any other natural person with ultimate effective control. If a controlling person is itself an entity, you follow the ownership chain up until you reach the natural persons at the end.

For each person listed, provide the full name, date of birth, permanent residence address, mailing address, jurisdiction of tax residence, and TIN. You also pick a “type of controlling person” from a numbered list (direct owner, indirect owner, director, settlor, trustee, protector, beneficiary, and so on). The Annex has room for two people. If there are more, attach additional copies of the Annex or supply a separate Form RC518 for each of them.¹

Section 4: Sign and Certify

An authorized signing officer of the entity must sign and date the form. The certification confirms the information is correct and complete, and commits the entity to giving the institution an updated form within 30 days of any change in circumstances that makes what you filed inaccurate or incomplete.¹ An unsigned form is not valid.

Where the Form Goes

Submit the completed form to the Canadian financial institution that requested it. The CRA does not receive the form itself; the institution keeps it on file and reports the account information onward when the rules require. If you cannot supply every piece of information at the moment you fill it out, the institution may give you up to 90 days to complete it.²

Keep the Form Current

The self-certification is not one-and-done. If the entity’s tax residence changes, if it restructures, if a controlling person is added or removed, or if the classification shifts from active to passive, you have 30 days from that change to file an updated form with the institution.¹ If the institution decides the existing form is unreliable (say, the entity’s address moved to a different country), it will request a new one and give the entity until the later of the end of the calendar year or 90 days after discovering the change to respond.²

What Happens If You Don’t Return It

Ignoring the request does not make reporting go away; it widens it. If the institution cannot obtain a valid self-certification, it must treat the account as reportable for every jurisdiction where the entity appears to be resident, based on indicators like address, place of incorporation, or trustee addresses.² In practice, the account gets reported to the CRA for every country the institution has a reason to suspect, instead of only the real one.

There are direct penalties too. An account holder who fails to provide a foreign TIN when requested faces a $500 penalty for each failure, provided the jurisdiction of residence issues and collects TINs.² The financial institution itself can be penalized up to $2,500 for each failure to obtain and validate a self-certification, which is why institutions push hard for a response and, in some cases, freeze or close accounts when the form doesn’t come back. The form’s instructions add the general warning that failure to provide the required information “may result in interest payable, penalties or other actions.”¹

Don’t Confuse RC519 with NR73 or NR74

NR73 and NR74 are questionnaires individuals send to the CRA to request an opinion on their personal residency status when leaving or entering Canada.⁴ RC519 is a different animal. It is not a request for a CRA ruling; it is a declaration you make to your financial institution so it can meet its reporting obligations under the Income Tax Act.

1
BMO Financial Group. RC519 Declaration of Tax Residence for Entities – Part XVIII and Part XIX of the Income Tax Act
2
Canada Revenue Agency. Guidance on the Common Reporting Standard – Part XIX of the Income Tax Act
3
Canada Revenue Agency. RC519 Declaration of Tax Residence for Entities – Part XVIII and Part XIX of the Income Tax Act
4
Canada Revenue Agency. Residency Status Determination