Seeking Advice Re: Canadian Pension

[mohinga]

I hope I'm not being rude by posting here... I am a Canadian expat; but living in Malaysia, not LOS. I will soon be able to apply for CPP and OAS (or whatever it is now called) and I'm seeking advice on the ins and outs of the application process.

There are not a lot of Canucks here (almost all pension queries on the local expat forums seem to deal with UK pensions); so I'm guessing that are probably more Canadians in Thailand.

I have a year or so to go before I qualify; so this is just a preliminary kind of thing. Even if someone could refer me to another forum dealing with cpp/oas matters, that would be a big help.

My situation: I have been out of Canada a long time; so I will only be eligible for partial pension. During this time in Asia I have been living on savings; so I have had no income to report. When I acquired Malaysia My Second Home (MM2H) status I checked with the taxman here (Hasil) and was told that, since I had no income other than bank interest here in Malaysia, I was not required to register with them.

So now I am wondering about the means test for the OAS (sorry if the terms are out of date). I think it used to be something like 50K or 60K per annum as the cutoff for oas clawback. I only have something like $1,000.per year from bank interest, but how do I present and substantiate this without a Malaysian tax return?

I have until next year before I am eligible; so I guess I could go back to Hasil and request that they register me. But I am still stuck with the fact that I have no reportable income here. Seems like a lot of hoops to jump through for nothing.

Any thoughts/suggestions/referrals would be much appreciated.

Thanks, eh?

[JusMe]

The Canadian government has some pretty good websites regarding services for seniors where you can get most of the info you want.

Obviously not an experienced forum, but good place to start, and I do remember it's pretty detailed.

Maybe start here, and follow other links: http://www.servicecanada.gc.ca/eng/sc/pensionersabroad/index.shtml