Buying US Stocks from Canada: What You Actually Keep

Between 24 September 2021 and 24 September 2026 the S&P 500 rose 72.9% in US dollars. A Canadian who owned it over the same five years saw 92.8% in Canadian dollars. Nearly twenty percentage points of that return had nothing to do with American companies. It was the loonie falling from 1.2680 to 1.4136 Canadian dollars per US dollar, according to the Bank of Canada's daily rates.

The honest answer to "how do I buy US stocks from Canada" is short, and slightly embarrassing for a guide this long: open an account at a Canadian broker, fund it, press buy. The hard part is what leaks out afterwards, and most guides rank the leaks in the wrong order. They lead with the 15% dividend withholding tax. For a low-yield index in a TFSA, that costs about 0.2% of the portfolio a year. A single retail currency conversion costs 1.5% on the day you do it. This guide ranks the leaks by size and shows the arithmetic. First, though, it reads what a set of well-known US companies told their own shareholders about Canada.

What US companies told their shareholders about Canada

Inve has parsed 6,133 US earnings-call summaries covering 3,158 companies (data as of September 2026). Each summary is structured: guidance, analyst questions, risks, metrics, each in its own field. We searched those fields for Canada, and the first finding surprised us.

Take the 142 companies that held an earnings call in each of the six quarters from January 2025 to June 2026, a steady panel that a growing sample cannot distort. The rule is deliberately mechanical: a call counts when a single passage of its summary mentions both Canada (or Canadian) and tariffs. By that rule, 13 of the 142 calls held January to March 2025 counted, then 5, 3, 1 and 1, and none from April to June 2026. Tariffs in general had not gone away: 59 of the same 142 summaries raised them in early 2025 and 47 still did in the second quarter of 2026. In these summaries, Canada as a tariff topic faded while tariffs did not.

Canada as a customer ran alongside it, and outlasted it. The travel commentary began in the same April and May 2025 calls where tariff talk peaked, and for some of the companies below it was still there in mid-2026.

In April 2025, Visa's chief financial officer Chris Suh told analysts, "we did see a meaningful slowdown in the Canada to U.S. border. But again, keep in mind, the diversification of our business... it's a very small percentage of our global travel volume and the revenue impact shouldn't be meaningful." Three months later he was more specific about why it still showed up in Visa's numbers: "The U.S. inbound is one of our higher-yielding corridors, and that's being impacted by the Canada to U.S. volume." Canadians spending in the United States are among the better-paying card traffic Visa carries, so the pullback cost more than its volume suggests.

The travel companies put bigger numbers on it. On its May 2025 call, Expedia reported that inbound bookings from Canada into the US fell nearly 30% in the first quarter, against a 7% decline in inbound travel overall. In November 2025 Expedia still described Canadian volume into the US as under pressure, though improving. Hilton's management put a size on it in April 2025: "And with Canada and Mexico, you saw those both deteriorate to the point where -- they're down for us, I would say, like high single digits. Each of them is down high single digits." On the same call, inbound travel from Canada and Mexico together was put at only 1.5% of Hilton's revenue.

The longest-running version of the story is in Las Vegas. On the July 2026 call of MGM Resorts, more than a year after the boycotts began, chief executive Bill Hornbuckle said: "Las Vegas is still down on international travel. And while we're picking up some additional seats, particularly as you look at a place like Canada, we're off considerably."

The consumer brands were more defensive. Asked in May 2025 about boycotts, McDonald's chief executive Chris Kempczinski cited an 8 to 10 point rise in anti-American sentiment, most pronounced in Northern Europe and Canada, then said: "there has been no change in how the consumer globally feels about the McDonald's brand. So we're not seeing any American sentiment have any impact on our business." Hershey treated Canada as a cost line rather than a customer. In October 2025, chief financial officer Steven Voskuil said: "Regarding tariffs, we are now modeling tariff expense in the range of $160 million to $170 million, a $10 million reduction, reflecting lower Canadian retaliatory tariffs partly offset by fluctuations in other country-specific rates."

Some kept building in Canada throughout. Costco had 114 Canadian warehouses by its March 2026 call, where chief executive Ron Vachris said: "We've recently expanded operating hours in all of our Canadian buildings to help offset some of the traffic increases." Chipotle guided 15 to 20 Canadian openings for 2025 and reported 21.

What the record shows is narrower than a verdict on the whole market, and more useful. At two of these companies management sized Canada itself: "a very small percentage" of Visa's global travel volume, and 1.5% of Hilton's revenue for inbound travel from Canada and Mexico together. In the structured summaries, Canada-specific tariff commentary faded after early 2025. The Canadian customer who stopped travelling south was still being described at MGM in July 2026. None of this measures how exposed the S&P 500 as a whole is to Canada; mention counts cannot do that. What it does give a Canadian investor is a question to ask of any US company before buying: what does management say Canada is worth to it, and has that changed? For the travel and gaming names above, the exposure is partly to you and your neighbours.

The leaks, ranked by size

Every dollar a Canadian puts into a US stock passes four gates: conversion on the way in, withholding on each dividend, Canadian tax on dividends and gains, and conversion on the way out if the money ever comes home. Estate tax and filing rules sit alongside.

Currency conversion: the biggest leak you control

Brokers publish their conversion fees. Questrade's fee page lists 1.5% on USD/CAD conversions, built into the rate, and its accounts hold both currencies so you need not convert on every trade. Wealthsimple's fee schedule lists 1.5% for CAD accounts trading US securities; in its USD accounts the scheduled fee steps down with size, from 1.5% under $10,000 to 0% at $100,000 and over (the exchange rate itself is still the broker's). Interactive Brokers Canada charges 0.20 basis points of trade value, minimum US$2, at its lowest tier. All three schedules were checked on 25 September 2026; all three change.

Norbert's gambit is the long-standing workaround. You buy the Canadian-dollar units of a dual-listed security — usually the Global X US Dollar Currency ETF, DLR on the TSX — have your broker journal them to the US-dollar units (DLR.U), and sell those. You pay two bid-ask spreads and any commissions instead of a retail FX spread. Questrade's own explainer puts typical bank and broker spreads at "approximately 1.5% to 2.5% per transaction" and warns that settlement and journalling "may take a few business days", while the rate keeps moving.

Think of conversion as a toll bridge. Withholding is a small toll on the dividends that cross each year. The bridge toll is charged on the whole principal, every time you cross. Which one to fix first follows from that.

Withholding tax: which account loses it for good

The Canada–US tax convention caps US tax on dividends paid to a Canadian resident at 15% (Article X). Without a Form W-8BEN on file with your broker, the IRS default for nonresidents is 30%. Article XXI(2) goes further for retirement accounts: dividends and interest received by a trust "operated exclusively to administer or provide pension, retirement or employee benefits" are exempt. That is why a US-listed stock or ETF held directly in an RRSP (or RRIF) pays no US withholding at all.

A TFSA, RESP or RDSP is not that kind of trust. The 15% is withheld and nothing gives it back, because those accounts pay no Canadian tax to credit it against. In a non-registered account the 15% is withheld too, but you report the gross dividend in Canadian dollars and claim a foreign tax credit (line 40500). Two more details catch people. The CRA's line 12100 guidance says foreign dividends "do not qualify for the dividend tax credit", so a US dividend is taxed like interest, not like a Canadian eligible dividend. And the RRSP exemption reaches through only one layer: as PWL Capital's analysis explains, a Canadian-listed ETF that owns US stocks loses the 15% even inside an RRSP, because the fund, not your RRSP, receives the dividend.

Canadian tax on gains, including the currency

Capital gains remain 50% taxable; the proposed increase to two-thirds was cancelled on 21 March 2025. The surprise is how the gain is measured: the CRA wants the cost converted at the exchange rate when you bought and the proceeds at the rate when you sold. A weaker loonie creates a taxable gain even if the stock went nowhere in US dollars; the CRA's capital gains guide (T4037) covers foreign-currency amounts in detail.

The worked example: C$100,000, five years, three accounts

Assumptions, all stated so you can redo them. C$100,000 converted on 24 September 2021 at the Bank of Canada rate of 1.2680, invested in the S&P 500 at 4,455.48 (FRED series SP500), valued on 24 September 2026 at 7,704.13 and a Bank of Canada rate of 1.4136. Price return only; dividends are handled separately below, and fund fees are ignored. Conversion cost is either a 1.5% retail fee or an assumed 0.2% all-in cost for Norbert's gambit, paid on the way in and on the way out. A 40% combined marginal tax rate — an illustration, not a bracket; use your own. The cost base is the US dollars actually invested, converted at the Bank of Canada rate on the purchase date; proceeds are the gross sale value at the Bank of Canada rate on the sale date. One simplification: conversion costs (the retail fee, or the spreads on the DLR and DLR.U trades) are treated as the price of the currency, not added to the stock's cost base or deducted from its proceeds, and any small gain or loss on the DLR units themselves is ignored. The table is an economic comparison of the two routes, not a completed tax return.

The conversion choice alone is worth C$4,728 on C$100,000. The retail route pays C$4,348 in fees (C$1,500 in, C$2,848 out); the gambit pays C$585. The rest of the gap is the extra US dollars bought on day one, compounding for five years. And look at the currency row. About C$19,800 of the taxable gain is the loonie's fall, which the CRA taxes exactly like a gain in the business.

Now the dividends. At an assumed 1.3% yield on the final US$136,094, one year pays US$1,769, or C$2,501 at 1.4136.

• RRSP, US-listed fund: nothing withheld. C$2,501 stays in the account and is taxed as ordinary income when you withdraw it, like everything else in an RRSP.
• TFSA: US$265 (C$375) withheld and gone. C$2,126 stays, tax-free forever.
• Non-registered: the same C$375 is withheld. Canadian tax at 40% on C$2,501 is C$1,000, less the C$375 foreign tax credit, so C$625 goes to the CRA. You keep C$1,501.

The TFSA's lost 15% here is 0.195% of the portfolio per year (15% of a 1.3% yield). One 1.5% retail conversion equals almost eight years of that leak. For a 4% dividend payer the TFSA leak triples to 0.6% a year, and the RRSP's advantage becomes real money. For an index fund, the currency decisions dwarf the account decision.

Two lines people discover late

T1135. If the total cost of your specified foreign property exceeds C$100,000 at any time in the year, you file Form T1135. The CRA's T1135 guidance says shares of non-resident corporations count "regardless of whether the shares are held through a broker"; property in an RRSP or TFSA is excluded. Under section 233.3 of the Income Tax Act, shares of non-resident corporations count wherever they are held, but funds count only when they are situated, deposited or held outside Canada, so US-dollar cash sitting at a Canadian broker is not foreign property just because it is in US dollars. The test is cost, not market value. The gambit version of the example has a cost base of C$99,800, C$200 under the line. Suppose that holder later adds C$1,000 of US stock in the same account: total cost becomes C$100,800 and the form is due for that year. The simplified reporting method applies only if the total cost stays below C$250,000 throughout the year.

US estate tax. The IRS instructions for Form 706-NA require that return when a nonresident's US-situated assets exceed US$60,000 at death, and those include US corporate stock wherever it is held. Scotia Wealth Management's January 2026 note says that covers US stocks and US-listed ETFs in registered accounts too, while Canadian-domiciled funds owning US stocks are generally not US-situs. The treaty (Article XXIX B) gives a Canadian resident the full US unified credit prorated by US assets over the worldwide estate; for 2026 the full credit is US$5,945,800, matching a US$15,000,000 exclusion (see the Form 706 instructions for the rate schedule). In the example, US$136,094 of US stock would attract a tentative US estate tax of about US$34,600. With a US$2 million worldwide estate, the prorated credit is about US$404,600, so nothing is owed. The return still has to be filed to claim it.

The tax treatment above is general; for your own situation, check with a qualified tax adviser in Canada.

The currency is a position, not a fee

Over five years the US dollar added about 11.5% to a Canadian's return. That is not a law of nature. The Bank of Canada rate peaked at 1.4603 on 3 February 2025, two days after the first US tariff order against Canada was signed, and fell to 1.3515 by 29 January 2026, a 7.4% slide in the US dollar in under a year. A Canadian who bought US stocks at the peak lost that much on the currency before the companies did anything.

Owning US stocks from Canada is two bets: on the companies, and on the US dollar against the loonie. Currency-hedged Canadian ETFs remove the second bet at a cost; a USD account keeps it without repeated conversions. Neither is right in general. Not knowing which bet you made is wrong in every case.

How Inve helps a Canadian investor research a US company

Nobody reads fifteen transcripts a quarter, and the quotes above sit deep inside calls most shareholders never open. The earnings-call briefs and company pages are public, no account needed; the full Guidance Tracker history is part of US Pro, which gives each account one free month. Every company in the A–Z of US stocks has its earnings calls broken into the parts a shareholder uses: guidance with the metric, target, period, speaker and exact words; analyst Q&A graded for whether management answered directly, partially, deflected or refused; risks with management's own quantification; and a watchlist of metrics to check next quarter.

For a Canadian holder, the practical use is the one this guide just demonstrated: open a company's calls, read what it says about Canada, tariffs or the currency, and check whether the figure it guided came true. The Guidance Tracker keeps each commitment's quarter-by-quarter history, so a target that quietly disappears is visible. The US earnings calendar shows when your holdings report next. If you are new to reading calls, start with how to read an earnings call transcript, then how to track management guidance across quarters.

Where this can mislead you

The Canada counts come from a mechanical rule applied to structured call summaries, not transcripts: a call counts when one summary passage mentions Canada or Canadian together with tariffs. That rule counts a passage saying Canadian tariffs had little effect the same as one saying they hurt, and it misses a call where the two words sat in different passages. Change the rule and the early numbers move (a literal "Canada"-only search gives 11 rather than 13 for early 2025), though every version we tried reaches zero or one by 2026. The 142-company panel was chosen for continuity, which tilts it towards large, established companies; the full corpus grew from 302 calls held in January–March 2025 to 2,805 held between July and early September 2026, so raw counts across quarters would mislead. Quotes are verbatim from the parsed summaries, and the record is about two years deep: it shows how these companies talk now, not a verdict on them.

The worked example is deliberately simple: one lump sum, no reinvested dividends or fund fees, one 40% tax rate, and an assumed 0.2% gambit cost that can be higher on small amounts or if the rate moves during journalling. Change an assumption and the totals change; the ranking of the leaks mostly does not.

Frequently asked questions

The owner's question

Strip away the brokers and the forms and one question is left: if you held this US company for ten years from Toronto or Calgary, what would you need to believe? That the business compounds, yes. Also that you can sit through the currency moving seven points against you in a year. The companies quoted here told their shareholders what Canada means to them, and for several of them it is a small line. The open question is what the US dollar means to you.