Insights

On April 16 the Minister of Finance delivered the 2024 Federal Budget in the House of Commons. The budget contained a long list of new spending initiatives and also included new tax measures that will have a big impact on individual Canadians and businesses. In this video I am going to focus on several items in the budget that I believe will have an impact specifically for retirees and their families. 1. The New Capital Gains inclusion rates 2. Amendments to the Home Buyers Plan 3. New RESP rules 4. Automatic Tax Filing 5. My personal thoughts on the budget to close

On March 28th, 2024 the CRA announced that Bare Trusts are exempt from the new trust reporting requirements for the 2023 Tax Year. While on its face this may come as a relief - the announcement has created a significant amount of frustration with taxpayers and their professional advisors. In this video, I will explain the announcement from the CRA last week, the impact on taxpayers who may have had a bare trust reporting requirement, and the reasons why I think the government needs to take notice of their mistakes here and make changes to the way that they roll out new tax policy to avoid more pain and frustration for taxpayers in the future.

The CRA has introduced new tax rules that take effect for your 2023 tax filings. The most significant changes come in the area of trust reporting. You may be thinking to yourself “I am not a trustee or a beneficiary of a trust, so I have nothing to worry about”. Not so fast. The new rules may put requirements on far more Canadians than most people realize. The impact of non-compliance can be significant fines and penalties, so you want to make sure that you remain on the right side of things with the CRA.

This week, the government of Canada announced their 2023 Fall Economic Update. The update included a number of measures that are going to impact the finances of Canadians. And the document itself was over 140 pages long. So I went through it and I pulled out the four items that I believe could have the biggest impact on people who are either already retired or who are getting ready to retire. We're going to walk through those four items and I'm going to explain them in a clear and concise way.

If you have been diligently saving throughout your working life, you may be disappointed to learn that at the end of the year you turn 71, you can no longer contribute to an RRSP account in your name. That means no more sweet tax-deductible RRSP contributions. Or, does it? In this video, I am going to describe 2 strategies that you can use to make tax deductible contributions to AN RRSP account that you can use even after you turn 71 years old.

Many retirees know that they have the ability to “split” certain types of retirement income. Pension income, and RRIF income (provided that the annuitant is over the age of 65) can be split with a lower income spouse in order to average down your tax bill. In many cases, retirees are surprised to learn that CPP benefits cannot technically be split on the tax return. They can, however, be shared. CPP sharing can produce the same effect as income splitting but it’s not a perfect process and it takes some work to figure out whether it makes sense for you. In this video, I am going to explain what CPP sharing is and how it works, and the conditions that need to exist so that CPP sharing makes sense for you. Then I am going to close with an example of a hypothetical retirement couple who used CPP pension sharing to lower their lifetime tax bill. And if we haven’t met yet, my name is Mark Walhout. I created this channel to share ideas and concepts that I am using to help people with retirement every day. If you want to get more videos like these consider subscribing to the channel.

Getting income taxes right in retirement can be stressful. While we are working, our employers generally do a good job of making sure our tax withholding matches our tax liability. But it is trickier in retirement. We have multiple income sources coming in, all with varying levels of income taxes withheld, and often times we have a negative surprise at tax time. In this video, I walk through a sample retiree's tax return and show how they ended up with a surprise tax bill at tax time. Then I talk about steps they can take if they want to get their tax withholding right, specifically for CPP and OAS.

As you approach retirement, should you be putting money into your TFSA or into your RRSP? Many people preparing for retirement consider this question. The short answer is: it depends. In this video I am going to describe the TFSA and RRSP accounts and walk through different scenarios that compare the two accounts side by side, and at the end of the video I am going to give you some key takeaways as you consider this question for your own retirement savings.

Are you nearing retirement and concerned about how much of your hard-earned savings will go towards taxes? The bad news is that you will almost certainly be paying income taxes throughout your retirement. In fact, it may be one of your largest household bills. The great news is that, with a bit of smart planning, you can manage that tax bill downward based on how and when you make withdrawals from your retirement accounts. In this video, I am going to walk you through an example of how you can strategically time the withdrawals from your investment accounts to lower your tax bill.