Tag Archives: TFSA

Raising Retirement Age: Can the Liberals find a way in upcoming Budget to tempt us to wait until 67 for OAS & CPP?

PM Trudeau reversed the Conservatives’ plan to raise OAS from 65 to 67, making it harder to follow advice to raise the Retirement Age going forward.

My latest Motley Fool blog looks at whether the Liberal Government intends to implement any suggestions by its Economic Advisory Council about raising the Retirement Age. See Will the Looming Federal Budget Try to Slip by Another Senior’s Benefit?

Of course, as one source says, the Government officially doesn’t want to raise the age of OAS and CPP eligibility from the current 65 to 67. After all, if it wanted to do that, all it had to do was leave in place the Harper administration’s policy that would have done just that for Old Age Security, albeit phased in gradually by the year 2023.

Even so, they must be sorely tempted, considering the fact that so many other Governments around the world are raising the retirement age to accommodate rising life expectancy patterns. The number of OAS recipients is expected to double over the next two decades, as more and more Baby Boomers take the plunge into Retirement, or at least Semi-Retirement.

Still, there’s more than one way to skin a cat. As I point out in the blog, anything as radical as raising the retirement age needs to be implemented gradually so as not to wreck the well-laid plans of financial advisors and clients who may have been counting on the rules as they now exist.

Delaying retirement age should be voluntary, not compelled by Government

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How TFSAs can aid your Victory Lap

depositphotos_43073977_xs-300x295My latest MoneySense Retired Money column on TFSAs is now online. You can read the whole thing by clicking on this highlighted link: How retirees can use TFSAs to save on tax.

I’m a huge fan of The Tax-free Savings Account or TFSA both for young people and for seniors, and everyone between.

It’s the single most powerful investment tax shelter available to Canadian investors. (For any American readers, the TFSA is roughly the equivalent of Roth IRAs).

So if you’re a member of the much-touted “Millennial” generation, you should move heaven or earth to maximize the annual $5,500 contribution as soon as you turn 18 – even if you have to solicit a “matching” contribution from your parents.

If you’ve not yet opened up a TFSA,  as of 2017 the cumulative TFSA room built up since the plan’s debut in 2009 will be $52,000. As I say in the column, for millennials the combination of the newly expanded Canada Pension Plan and a TFSA maximized from age 18 on means that by the time they are old enough to read the Retired Money column, they will be well positioned for retirement.

While late for Boomers, TFSAs can still be a boon in retirement

But as this particular MoneySense column has been dubbed “Retired Money,” the focus is on what the TFSA can do for near-retirees and seniors already retired. When it first came out in 2009, we aging baby boomers lamented the fact the TFSA hadn’t been available when we we were just starting out.

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Federal Budget 2016: don’t expect much relief for personal finances or retirement

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Federal finance minister Bill Morneau selects Canadian-designed shoes for upcoming federal budget

Here’s my latest column in the Financial Post, which provides a look ahead to the federal budget, which will go live at 4 pm Tuesday afternoon.

You can find the column here by clicking on this headline: Why Tuesday’s budget may not hold much good news for your personal finances. It’s also in the print edition of today’s paper.

Here is info on the media lockup, which starts at 9:30 am.

Once the floodgates open on or shortly after 4 pm Tuesday, you should be able to get access to the budget by clicking on the Department of Finance website here. We will update this site as necessary and also watch my Twitter feed @JonChevreau, as we disseminate coverage once available. This feed also shows up on the right side of the Hub’s main page.

Tax Changes for 2016

Aaron Schechter
Aaron Schechter

By Aaron Schechter, CPA, CA, TEP – Crowe Soberman LLP

Special to the Financial Independence Hub

In the Aesop fable of “The Ant and the Grasshopper,” a hungry grasshopper is refused food by the hard-working ant when the winter comes. The fable sums up the moral lessons about the virtues of hard work and planning for the future. As you get ready to file your 2015 personal income taxes, now is the time to look ahead and plan for 2016.

Reduction in the small business corporate income tax rate

Canadian-controlled private corporations (CCPCs) are entitled to claim a small business deduction on the first $500,000 of business income.  Commencing in 2016, the federal tax rate will decrease by 0.5% a year for four years, reducing the small business income tax rate in Ontario to 15.0% in 2016, 14.5% in 2017, 14.0% in 2018, and 13.5% in 2019.

Tax planning point: Defer the receipt or recognition of corporate income eligible for the small business deduction limit to future years.

Increase in the top personal federal tax rate

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How parents can give their children the gift of future Financial Independence

Two Red Christmas Balls with Blank Embossed PaperFriday’s post on how Hub readers are generally embracing the $4,500 TFSA expansion promised we’d run one particular letter in full on Sunday.

Below is the letter referred to.  The parents in question gave this letter to their three children at Christmas of 2011, just a few years after Tax-free Savings Accounts were launched. They gave us permission to run it, in the hopes that other families could benefit from the ideas, which include parental matching of whatever savings the kids can come up with to fund their TFSAs.

Merry Christmas    2011

 Name  of Child here _____________________                    

This Christmas and future Christmases Mom and I wish to help you to start planning and working towards your long term financial goals/security. We realize that as responsible young adults you use your financial resources to meet your everyday fixed/living expenses and that with your busy lifestyles you do not always have the time to manage/consider long term financial planning. Continue Reading…