Tax Bulletin

Many financial institutions offer TFSAs, along with traditional RRSPs and non-registered accounts. You should be able to open a TFSA at most financial institutions, such as Canadian trust companies, investment dealers, life insurance companies, banks, credit unions, and online brokers. You will have to provide the institution with your social insurance number when opening an account.

Calculating the TFSA contribution room may seem complicated; however, there is good news. Although you should keep records about your TFSA transactions to ensure that you do not exceed your TFSA contribution room, the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) tracks TFSA room similar to the way it tracks RRSP contribution room. Based on information provided by TFSA issuers, the CRA will determine your TFSA contribution room at the beginning of each calendar year.

If you are a registered user of My Account (a self-service portal offered by the CRA that enables individuals to access their own tax and benefit information securely online), you can view your TFSA contribution room. This will generally be based on your balance at the beginning of the calendar year. However, TFSA issuers have until the end of February to provide records to the CRA for the previous year, so there may be a lag until your balance is updated early in the year. Information about your TFSA contribution room can also be found on MyCRA, a secure mobile application for individual taxpayers.

If you don’t have access to CRA’s online services, you can use CRA’s automated Tax Information Phone Service (TIPS) to access your individual contribution limit. Keep in mind that this information is available from mid-February to the end of December. It’s also possible to request a TFSA Room Statement or TFSA Transaction Summary by contacting the CRA’s general enquiries line for individuals at 1-800-959-8281. The TFSA Transaction Summary shows the information that the CRA received from your TFSA issuer(s) about your contributions and withdrawals.

As previously mentioned, the CRA’s information is generally updated to provide your room balance at the beginning of the year. Therefore, if you have any transactions in your TFSA in the current year, you may be able to use form RC343, Worksheet — TFSA Contribution Room to determine your current contribution room balance.

This is a very important consideration. When funds have been withdrawn from the TFSA, and the maximum amount allowed per year has already been contributed, it is very important that the recontribution not happen until the next calendar year. This is because the contribution room does not reset until the start of the following calendar year. Withdrawals do not get added back to your available contribution room until Jan. 1 of the following year. If amounts withdrawn are recontributed in the same calendar year and there is not enough contribution room, you will be penalized for making an overcontribution.

TFSA overcontributions are subject to a 1% penalty tax on the highest excess TFSA amount for each month in which an excess remains. Note that the 1% penalty tax applies for a particular month even if an excess amount was contributed and withdrawn later during the same month. The penalty tax is calculated in the same manner as RRSP overcontributions. However, in the case of the TFSA, there is no $2,000 margin for error which is available for RRSP overcontributions—the first dollar of TFSA overcontributions will be penalized. So, you will have to track your TFSA limit and carefully compare it to the contributions you make during the year. The CRA may notify TFSA holders of overcontributions.

If you notice that you have overcontributed, you should contact your financial institution as soon as possible to arrange for the overcontribution to be withdrawn from your account. You will also be required to complete and file forms RC243 — Tax-Free Savings Account (TFSA) Return and RC243-SCH-A — Excess TFSA Amounts and pay

A direct transfer between your TFSAs is not considered a contribution or withdrawal and is allowed by the CRA as a qualifying transfer. All qualifying transfers must be completed by a financial institution. In other words, you can’t personally withdraw the funds from your TFSA and immediately recontribute those funds to another TFSA. The CRA considers this to be a separate contribution, which will impact your contribution room and can result in an overcontribution.

Note that if the CRA charges you a TFSA overcontribution penalty tax on a qualifying transfer, it’s possible that the transfer was incorrectly recorded by one or both of the financial institutions involved in the transfer. In this case, you should contact them to correct the reporting of the transfer with the CRA.

The main issue to be considered here is that U.S. citizens and other U.S. persons, such as green card holders, are subject to U.S. tax on their worldwide income. Under the Canada-U.S. Tax Treaty, U.S. persons in Canada can elect to defer the taxation of income earned in certain plans (such as RRSPs, registered retirement income funds, or deferred profit sharing plans) for U.S. tax purposes. This income is deferred until it is withdrawn from the plan.

This deferral applies because current income in these plans is exempt from tax in Canada and each such plan is operated exclusively to provide pension or employee benefits. As TFSA contributions and withdrawals are not linked to employment or retirement, treaty relief will not apply to TFSAs. This means that TFSAs will be treated as an ordinary investment account for a U.S. person and TFSA earnings will be part of a U.S. person’s taxable income for U.S. purposes.

TFSAs are also foreign financial accounts for U.S. tax purposes. As such, they are subject to U.S. foreign reporting requirements on an annual basis. Where TFSAs are operated as a trust, further annual reporting will be required. Penalties may be charged by the U.S. government where TFSAs owned by U.S. persons are not disclosed as required.

For further information regarding U.S. foreign information reporting and TFSAs, see our Tax Bulletin, Tax Consequences for U.S. Citizens and Other U.S. Persons Living in Canada. If you’re a U.S. person, the best advice is to consult with your BDO advisor before investing in a TFSA.

Yes. Generally, if you make an interest-free loan or gift funds to a spouse to invest, the income on the investment will be attributed to you and taxed in your hands. In the case of funds used by your spouse to make a TFSA contribution, there will be no taxable income, and therefore, the attribution rules will not be a concern. The same will be true where you make an interest-free loan or a monetary gift to an adult child so that they can invest in a TFSA. Loaning or gifting money to family members to invest in a TFSA can be an important personal tax planning consideration, depending on your situation. It will be important, however, that you don’t make a contribution directly to anyone’s TFSA except your own. Such a contribution is not in keeping with the TFSA rules.

If it’s determined that income in a TFSA is earned from a business, the related income will be taxable. Generally, it’s a question of fact whether frequent trading of investments by an individual would be considered a trading business. There have been cases where the CRA has questioned whether an individual is carrying on a business when there have been high investment returns and/or frequent trading of securities in their TFSA.

There isn’t a clear set of rules that dictates when a business is considered to be carried on in a TFSA, although some guidance on this matter is provided in the CRA’s Income Tax Folio S3-F10-C1, which deals with qualified investments. If you are a frequent trader, we suggest restricting that activity to non-registered accounts. If you have questions concerning trading in your TFSA, contact your BDO advisor.

Investment management fees relate to the services provided by an investment manager on behalf of the owner of the investments. In the case of registered plans (such as TFSAs), investment management fees represent an expense of the registered plan trust, and generally, it would be expected that such fees would be paid by the trustee using funds from within the plan.

However, it's not uncommon for the plan annuitant or holder (referred to as the controlling individual) to redirect their investment management fees to an open account, which results in the fees being paid with funds outside of their TFSA. The CRA had a long-standing administrative policy that allowed the payment of these expenses from outside of the registered plan by the controlling individual without adverse tax consequences.

In 2023, legislation was passed that specifically removes the payment of reasonable investment counsel fees by the controlling individual of the registered plan from the definition of advantage. This solidifies the CRA long-standing administrative position in legislation.

Remember that investment management fees for registered plans are not deductible whether paid outside or inside of a registered plan.

No. As discussed earlier, your TFSA contribution room will include amounts withdrawn in a previous year from any of your TFSAs. Therefore, if you fully used your TFSA room from 2009 to 2023 of $88,000, and collapse your TFSA when it is worth $90,000, you’ll be able to put the entire withdrawal of $90,000 back into a new TFSA in a subsequent year when you begin to save for a new car (plus an amount up to the annual TFSA contribution room that accumulates by then). So, you will be able to use a TFSA repeatedly over the course of your lifetime to save for different purposes.

This is definitely a difficult question to answer as there was never a one-size-fits-all answer on the RRSP contribution versus mortgage repayment issue. So, the answer will vary even more now that TFSAs have been added to the mix. That said, there are several observations that can be made:

• If you make an RRSP contribution, this will typically result in a tax refund that you can use to pay down your mortgage. Many financial advisors suggest this approach as you are making progress toward both paying off your mortgage and saving for retirement. A TFSA contribution will not produce a tax refund.
• The issue of whether an RRSP or TFSA is better for you will really depend on what your marginal income tax rate is now and what it will be in retirement.
  • If you are in a high tax bracket now and will be in a lower bracket later, RRSP contributions effectively move income that would be taxed at a high rate now into a lower tax bracket later. This produces both a tax deferral and a tax saving.
  • If you are in a lower tax bracket now and expect to be in the same lower tax bracket later in retirement, a TFSA might make more sense than an RRSP. The use of an RRSP could put you into a higher bracket in retirement while a deduction arises now at a low marginal rate. Also, having lower income in retirement may allow you to keep more of your government benefits that are income-tested such as Old Age Security, the Guaranteed Income Supplement, GST/HST credits, and other benefits/credits such as the age credit.
• When comparing a TFSA contribution to making a mortgage repayment, your mortgage is really just another TFSA. That is, any non-deductible interest that you don’t have to pay due to the mortgage repayment is effectively tax-free income earned with a fairly good return on your money. Therefore, in terms of limiting risk, many individuals will concentrate on repaying their mortgage first, especially since the accumulated TFSA room should still be there when they finish paying off their mortgage. If the investment rate of return in your TFSA is less than the mortgage rate, paying down your mortgage will definitely be more beneficial.
• If you have funds now but they may be needed later, temporarily using a TFSA can make sense. Contributing money to an RRSP now and withdrawing it soon after is usually not a good idea. Although the income and deduction may offset each other (i.e., if the contribution and withdrawal fall within the same year), this eliminates RRSP room. If you’re in this situation, a better plan could be to put the money into a TFSA and later withdraw and contribute the funds to an RRSP once you’re sure you won’t need the money until retirement (assuming of course using an RRSP makes sense for you in general).
• Finally, many financial advisors recommend that individuals keep a reserve fund for a rainy day. The TFSA is perfectly suited to this as your reserve fund will not be taxed. If you do have to make a withdrawal, you can put the money back in a later year when financial resources permit.

If you become a non-resident of Canada, you will be allowed to maintain your TFSA and you will not be taxed on any earnings in the account or on withdrawals in Canada. However, no contribution room will accrue for any year you are a non-resident and any contributions you make as a non-resident will be subject to a penalty tax. You will also need to determine how the TFSA will be treated under the tax laws of the country you immigrate to. As mentioned previously, the U.S. will treat your TFSA as a regular investment account.