Top Year-End Tax Season Tips

While you might be focused on other things this holiday season, the end of the calendar year is also a great time to get recharged and reorganized before another year approaches.

Here are some of our favourite year-end tax season tips to save money now and build wealth later.

Year-End Tax Season Tips

1. Receipts matter. Be aware an audit from our Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) can happen essentially anyplace, anytime. As such, since tax files for auditing purposes may be selected at random, don’t be caught off guard. Ensure for any previous tax year you keep a sound six years of tax return documentation and receipts, at minimum, for any possible audit.

2. $500 for free. Like our friend Rob Carrick just highlighted in a recent Globe and Mail article, if parents can find $2,500 before year-end then said parents will get $500 for free, to pad the Registered Retirement Savings Plan (RESP) contribution they just made. Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) provides an incentive for parents, family and friends to save for a child’s post-secondary education by paying a grant based on the amount contributed to an RESP for the child. The Canada education savings grant (CESG) money will be deposited directly into the child’s RESP.

Who qualifies?

No matter what your family income is, ESDC pays an amount of Canada Education Savings Grant (basic CESG) of 20% of annual contributions you make to all eligible RESPs for a qualifying beneficiary to a maximum CESG of $500 in respect of each beneficiary ($1,000 in CESG if there is unused grant room from a previous year), and a lifetime limit of $7,200.

So, if you can make your contribution to any RESP this year, do so.

3. Claim COVID-19. Did you work from home because of COVID-19? If so, take advantage of the deduction and claim COVID-19.

In 2020, eligible employees who worked remotely could deduct up to $400 in-home expenses from their taxable income, without the need to keep receipts or get a signed T2200 form from their employer. Now, through the 2022 tax year, you should be able to claim up to $500. Here is our source:

“In response to the record number of Canadians working remotely during COVID-19, we created a simplified home expense deduction that enabled you last year to claim up to $400 in expenses for things like new office equipment, without the need to keep receipts.

A re-elected Liberal government will:

Extend the Home Expense deduction for an additional 2 years, through the 2022 tax year, and increase the deductible amount to $500.” Source: https://liberal.ca/our-platform/extending-and-expanding-the-home-expense-deduction/

4. Collapse your RRSP and turn that into an RRIF. While the RRSP is an outstanding tax-deferred account for wealth-building, everything you should know about this account is in that link, if you turned age 71 this year you must collapse this account by December 31st.

By turning your RRSP into an RRIF, you can continue to get the tax-deferred growth benefits for assets inside the RRIF while some forced withdrawals slowly take place over time. Even if those forced RRIF withdrawals occur slowly, those withdrawals can help smooth out taxes. And smoothing out taxes is a good thing to avoid major tax hits in any given year if you’re already receiving CPP or OAS benefits.

There are a couple of extra tax benefits of RRIFs, most of all, it’s eligible for pension splitting. So if you have a spouse and a large RRSP balance, now you can split the RRIF income by up to 50%! The icing on the cake is the RRIF income is also eligible for the pension tax credit! Pension splitting can start as early as age 65, so depending on your situation, you may want to consider converting a portion of your RRSP balance at that time to take advantage of the tax benefits. Every situation is different but we will say that we optimize pension splitting (and when to start) with the retirement projections we do with our clients.

Make sure you check out our case studies and projections on these subjects to learn more!

5. Offset juicy capital gains. Managing capital gains to mitigate taxes payable is an important year-end consideration, in any year. My Own Advisor sold some assets in his taxable account a few years ago here.

Based on a huge 2021 market year, some investors may consider dumping some stocks that never performed as well as they might have liked to offset capital gains. Be mindful to get under the wire for any year-end capital loss, we think it makes great sense to ensure all transactions settle before Christmas to avoid transaction settlements that don’t get under the wire by December 31.

6. Set aside some income for the self-employed. As owners of corporations, we set aside income earned to avoid a tax hit come corporate tax filing time. We believe all self-employed individuals should do the same. As a rule of thumb, we like the idea of setting aside about 20-25% of your income earned for future taxes.

7. Tax-deferred and tax-free is better than taxable income. We get it. The TFSA seems better than the RRSP for most but some feel the RRSP is still better to contribute than the TFSA. While we believe the TFSA is the best, wealth-building account for any adult Canadian regardless of income-level earnings – we don’t want you to have investing paralysis by analysis. Pick either the tax-deferred account (RRSP) or the tax-free account (TFSA) to contribute to and just keep going…

A reminder with the TFSA you pay tax on money you’ve earned before you make a contribution; and with an RRSP you get a tax refund now on money you contribute, but will have to pay tax later, on money you withdraw from the plan/RRSP/RRIF.

Read on for tons of details in these pillar posts:

Here is a great summary table of why for any income earner, TFSAs can help you build wealth for retirement too:

TFSAs – Withdrawals are not considered taxable income. Income-tested benefits and income tax credits such as the GST Credit, Old Age Security (OAS) and the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) aren’t affected by any TFSA withdrawals. Withdrawals don’t reduce these benefits.

RRSPs – Withdrawals are considered taxable income. RRSP withdrawals could reduce amounts you receive from income-tested benefits and income tax credits such as the GST Credit, OAS and GIS. RRSP withdrawals could reduce your post-retirement government benefits.

Since our site is often geared towards FIRE, early retirees, semi-retirees or folks already drawing down their portfolio in a tax-efficient way, here are some other tips:

8. Base any RRIF withdrawals on the younger spouse. If you do convert some of all of your RRSP to an RRIF, consider RRIF withdrawals based on the age of your spouse, if he or she is younger. This will reduce the required minimum annual withdrawal and will allow you to defer tax longer.

9. Withdraw losers from your RRIF. If you have to make withdrawals from your RRIF (but don’t need the cash to cover expenses) then consider making in-kind withdrawals of investments that have declined in value and holding those outside your RRIF. In doing so, any future gains will be taxed at capital gains rates outside of your RRIF – see comments above about capital losses. Then again, don’t hold any losers in any account!

These are some of our top ETFs here.

10. Split your pension benefits. If you receive eligible pension income (including RRIF withdrawals if you’re over age 65, and any pension benefits from an employer pension plan), you’re able to split that income with your spouse. If you’re over age 65, you might get the first $2,000 of RRIF withdrawals as a pension credit.

11. Maximize government OAS and CPP benefits. If you reached age 65 this year, a reminder you could apply for OAS benefits but you don’t have to. You can defer OAS to age 70. The same goes for CPP. Deferring CPP, that increases your benefit by 0.7 percent each month, or 8.4% annually.

Why you should consider deferring CPP to age 70.

Year-End Tax Season Tips Summary

As always take some time to look at your financial situation and try and figure out what works best for you. Ask us any questions along the way!

Remember, nobody cares more about your financial future than you.

Need any support with your retirement income projections?

Knowing how to save and invest wisely, to help you get the most out of your portfolio, is something we can help with. We’ve been there!

In addition to that asset accumulation work, if you need some help solving your retirement decumulation puzzle (i.e., how to efficiently withdraw from your retirement accounts), or figuring out if you have enough saved to spend for your retirement income plans, we’re here to help answer those questions and more as well!

If you are interested in obtaining private projections for your financial scenario, read more about our retirement projections service.

A reminder to those who have recently joined our readership and new fans of the site – our site is growing thanks to you!! As an example, a big thanks to Rob Carrick for mentioning our site and services in The Globe and Mail. From Rob:

“TODAY’S FINANCIAL TOOL
Cashflow$ & Portfolios is the name of a website built to help people learn how to reach their long-term financial goals with budget and long-term investing. Brought to you by a pair of veteran personal finance bloggers.”

Thanks Rob Carrick!

Stay tuned for more case studies, free tax tips, giveaways and much more over time.