Employees of a Canadian employer were assigned to Europe where they worked on various projects for well over two years and had a wide range of their expenses covered by the employer. The Directorate indicated:
- In the case of an employee assigned to a particular region and who worked at different factories in that region while staying at the same apartment in that region, the assignment at each factory would not be considered to be a separate assignment for purposes of determining whether the nature of the work was temporary. However, if the employee was assigned to a region for a certain period of time, then to another region such that the employee was required to settle in terms of board and lodging in that other region, each region could be considered separately to determine the temporary nature of the work.
- An employee could have only one principal place of residence, so that where an employee settled with the employee's family in a place in Europe for a long period of time, this could suggest that the former residence was no longer the employee's principal place of residence.
- If a relation of the employees staying in the employee's Canadian home paid a portion of the expenses, this would not necessarily be regarded as paying rent.
- If the Canadian home was rented out for even one month during a particular taxation year, then during that taxation year the employee would not be able to satisfy the test that the Canadian home had not been rented out, whereas this test could be satisfied for the following taxation year if no such rental occurred in that subsequent taxation year.
- A two-month training period at a different site than the special work site would not cause an assignment of 24 months at the special work site to be considered non-temporary.
- It was quite unlikely that an employee had been working abroad for five consecutive years pursuant to an agreement that did not specify any time period for the assignment would satisfy the “temporary” requirement.
- The portion of an allowance paid to the employee that was attributable to various leisure activities, school expenses for children, and various transportation expenses would not be eligible for the exemption under s. 6(6)(a)(i), as the exemption did not apply to expenses incurred by the employee at the employee's former place of residence.