Here’s my latest blog for the Financial Post, titled Here’s how to find all your tax info in one place.

It features chartered accountant Robin Taub (pictured), who is also a spokesperson for Turbo Tax.

I know that filing personal tax returns seems impossibly far away, considering that winter has yet to begin in earnest. But as Taub points out, there are only three weeks left in 2015 and if you want to minimize tax owing for this calendar year, waiting until 2016 may be too late for certain actions: notably making charitable contributions or making a contribution to an RESP in order to qualify for the accompanying grant.

December 31 is the deadline for those but there’s an earlier practical deadline of December 24th for those who want to engage in a last-minute bout of tax-loss selling or booking offsetting gains. That’s because it takes three days for trades to settle and there aren’t a lot of working days left to trade between Christmas and New Year’s.

But Taub’s number-one tip is that the easiest way to get organized early for the next tax-filing season is to sign up for the Canada Revenue Agency’s My Account for Individuals. The FP blog goes into some detail on that.

TFSA rollbacks will hurt the needy

Also in the FP today is an article by public policy consultant Neil Mohindra entitled TFSA rollbacks will hurt the needy. Continue Reading…

Ottawa is moving to steamroller the old $5,500 TFSA limit back into place by Jan. 1, 2016, less than a week after the federal clerk of petitions posted the government’s version of the Working Canadians’ TFSA petition to keep the annual contribution limit on Tax-free Savings Accounts (TFSAs) at the current $10,000 level.

Details also in my column in Tuesday’s Financial Post or online, headlined TFSA cap cancels out benefits of ‘middle class’ tax cut, critics warn.

The URL for the federal clerk of petitions’ TFSA petition is at https://petitions.parl.gc.ca

The Hub has been following this petition since its creation in the aftermath of the Liberal Government’s electoral victory.

Last Thursday morning, Working Canadians issued an update that was posted at the Hub’s sister site, Findependence.TV, because the Hub itself was down for maintenance that day. It was headlined Majority of Canadians support leaving TFSA limit at $10,000, poll shows.

Updated 3:15 pm.

Working Canadians issued two press releases today. The first was at 5 am under embargo and appeared on the original version of this blog. It is still there at the bottom, but we have added above it one issued mid-afternoon today:

Dear Working Canadians Supporters:

You may have heard that late yesterday afternoon the new federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau said the government was planning to proceed with reducing the Tax Free Savings Account (TFSA) limit from $10,000 to $5,500. As you may know, Working Canadians has waged a very successful campaign over the last few weeks to encourage Canadians to support leaving the TFSA limit at the current level. The support from Canadians of all income levels, of all age groups, and even of those supporting every political party has been overwhelmingly positive. Despite their claims to the contrary, if the government reduces the TFSA limit they will be doing so against the best interests of the vast majority of Canadians.

After we launched the initial Working Canadians electronic petition about a month ago to encourage the government to retain the Tax Free Savings Account (TFSA) limit at $10,000, the federal government very recently created its own online petition process Continue Reading…

Low interest rates are a secular rather than cynical phenomenon, and can be expected to stay with us for the rest of the decade, according to Vanguard global chief economist Joe Davis.

Speaking on a conference call to journalists Wednesday, David said that while the U.S. federal reserve will soon initiate “Lift-off”  on interest rates, this will be followed “by a potential pause around 1%.” He termed this a “dovish tightening” that will remove some of unprecedented accommodation that’s occurred since the global financial crisis.

“In our view, there is a high likelihood of an extended as in interest rates at, say, 1%, that opens the door for balance-sheet normalization and leaves the inflation-adjusted federal funds rate negative through 2017.”

As a result, Vanguard’s outlook for fixed income “remains positive, yet muted … our ‘fair value’ estimate for the benchmark 10-year US Treasury yield still resides at about 2.5%, even with a Fed lift.”

US equity bull market likely to persist for some time

Continue Reading…