Panama Expat Forum

oceansbreeze
Joined 2019
Posts: 2

4 years ago

Moving to Panama with child and passive rental income

4 years ago

Hey everybody, I've visited Panama once, and am going back in February. We've decided Panama is where we want to retire... I've researched and read, and studied lots, I'm working on my spanish, and I figure I have 3-4 years to worry about it before we are ready to pack it up... Lots of little questions jammed into one big post, feel free to chime in on anything you know about and can educate me on.

What I haven't figured out are some rather difficult ( in my mind) logistics of the move... looking for ideas and answers to clarify how this would be possible. First a few facts...

-I currently have a 5 year old daughter, who will be probably about 10 when we move....

-I plan to return to Canada during the summer months to live at my cottage in Northern Ontario.....

-the school system there runs Feb-Dec but I have learned some private schools follow the traditional August to June semesters... allowing me only 2 months to come back before school begins (this is outside of the 183 day time frame) as 10 months would be needed for the school year.

-my source of income is passive from investment properties and savings I have amassed in the last 7 years. I could easily live 3 months in Panama for every one month of rents collected.

-How is that taxed? I plan to have a property manager collect rent, and deposit monies into an investment account.... all money put into RRSP, only take my personal tax limit tax free, I'm not sure if my logic is flawed or not.... Is any money transferred to a Panamanian account exempt from the Canadian taxes? I read about with-holding taxes of 25%.... I read about the multiple forms I can get, and fill out on this part (with-hold on the gross or net) but if it's all going into an RRSP for later withdrawal can I postpone taxes on rental income for later by doing this?

If I didn't have a school aged child, I'd just do the 6 months there, and 6 months back easy... so a bit overwhelmed by lack of options to allow her to get her education, and not cut all ties with Canada too quickly.... while maintaining a legal flow of cash to live in Panama...

Not sure if it would matter, but wife plans to find independent work as a consultant and fly to clients from Panama (she is an electrical engineering specialist) so she plans to work, and make money while in Panama, and also has her own rental properties for passive income like me

Given this small tidbit about us, how could we go about getting settled there with as few problems as possible?

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