The lease, payment conditions, invoices and actual transfers can show whether the tenant paid and was reimbursed or simply received reduced rent.
Reconcile the commercial labels
A spreadsheet may call several incentives an allowance. Identify the governing clause for each amount and avoid adding unlike items into one unexplained investment total.
Read the lease, invoices, bank records, inspection approvals together. For every amount, record who paid, who received it, whether reimbursement occurred, and whether the obligation survives termination. A rent concession reduces what the tenant owes; it is not automatically a repayment of tenant capital. For E-2, the investor’s money must face risk and be committed irrevocably, and an applicant may be actively in the process of investing. There is no fixed minimum: substantiality uses proportionality. Investor and enterprise must share treaty nationality—Canadian citizenship rather than Canadian permanent residence for that claim—with at least 50% treaty-national ownership, while the investor ordinarily establishes development and direction through at least 50% ownership, operational control, or other means. Do not double-count one invoice as both gross spending and retained investment.
Hypothetical example: A Russell dental-laboratory purchaser receives three free-rent months plus reimbursement for ventilation installed by the tenant. The closing ledger calls both items “landlord support.” She should preserve proof of her contractor payment, the inspection condition, the reimbursement transfer, and the rent abatement. The laboratory may qualify while preparing to open if it will be real and active; records should not falsely say it is already operating. Its plan must also address present or future capacity to provide more than a minimal living or make a significant economic contribution; projected future capacity should generally be realizable within five years after normal business activity begins. E-2 provides no direct permanent-residence path.