Non Taxable Non Retirement Account

Withdrawing Dividends And Interest Outside Of Your Rrsp And Tfsa

In our taxable accounts, the ETFs that we hold pay dividends. These arrive automatically and are deposited into our Questrade Account as cash. These can then be withdrawn easily and spent.

At the end of the year, Questrade will send you tax documents that indicate how much you received, and you have to include that when doing your taxes.

In taxable accounts, we hold a lot of XIC. This is the ETF that tracks the Canadian market . The reason that we chose to hold the Canadian index in our taxable accounts, is due to the dividend tax credit that is received when holding Canadian dividend payers in this account.

We still hold some US and international ETFs in our taxable account, but the emphasis is definitely on Canadian dividend-paying investments since under the right conditions , you can actually receive those dividends tax-free.

International and US dividends, on the other hand, are taxed as regular income and so they are nowhere near as tax efficient as holding a Canadian index ETF in this account.

Taxation Of Taxable Brokerage Accounts

Brokerage accounts are taxed depending on the type of transaction within the account. Whenever you receive taxable distributions from an investment, you pay a tax on them during that tax year. Qualified dividends and capital gains distributions are taxed at more favorable long-term capital gains tax rates.

You also pay taxes when you sell an investment at a gain. Gains on investments held for more than one year typically qualify for more favorable long-term capital gains tax rates. Gains on investments held less than a year are typically taxed at your ordinary income tax rate. Losses on investments can offset investment gains, which may lessen your tax burden.

Tax Payable On Prohibited Investments

If the TFSA trust acquires a prohibited investment, or if previously acquired property becomes prohibited, the investment will be subject to a special tax equal to 50% of the fair market value of the investment, and the holder must file Form RC243, Tax-Free Savings Account Return.

The tax is refundable in certain circumstances. For more information, see Refund of taxes paid on non-qualified or prohibited investments.

If the prohibited investment ceases to be a prohibited investment while it is held by the TFSA trust, the TFSA trust is considered to have disposed of and immediately re-acquired the property at its FMV.

The holder is also liable for the 100% advantage tax on income earned and capital gains realized on prohibited investments.

The 100% advantage tax applies to income earned, and the portion of any realized capital gain that accrued, regardless of when the prohibited investment generating the income or gain was acquired.

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Cellular Phone And Internet Services

If you provide your employee with a cell phone that you own, to help carry out their employment duties, the fair market value of the cell phone or device is not a taxable benefit.

However, if you reimburse your employee for the cost of their own cell phone , the FMV of the cell phone or device is considered a taxable benefit to the employee. This is the case even if the employee used, lost, or damaged the cell phone or device while carrying out their employment duties.

If you pay for, or reimburse the cost of an employees cell phone service plan, or Internet service at home to help carry out their employment duties, the portion used for employment purposes is not a taxable benefit.

If part of the use of the cell phone or Internet service is personal, you have to include the value of the personal use in your employee’s income as a taxable benefit. The value of the benefit is based on the FMV of the service, minus any amounts your employee reimburses you. You can only use your cost to calculate the value of the benefit if it reflects the FMV.

For cellular phone service only, we do not consider your employee’s personal use of the cellular phone service to be a taxable benefit if all of the following apply:

• the plan’s cost is reasonable
• the plan is a basic plan with a fixed cost
• your employee’s personal use of the service does not result in charges that are more than the basic plan cost

Note

Brokerage Account Vs Ira: What’s The Right Move

Many or all of the products here are from our partners that pay us a commission. Its how we make money. But our editorial integrity ensures our experts opinions arent influenced by compensation. Terms may apply to offers listed on this page.

You’re ready to open an investment account and start building a nest egg. When it comes to a traditional IRA vs. brokerage account, you’ll find pros and cons to both. We’ve created this primer to help you decide which one might be right for you.

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Theres More To Investing Than Your Employer

Tags:Investing,Retirement,Investments

For most people, retirement accounts are where they do the bulk of their investing, and its important to take full advantage of them. However, if youre maxing out your contributions and have extra income to invest, it may be time to look at additional options.

Keep More Of Your Money During Your Golden Years By Incorporating These Into Your Retirement Plan

Just as taxes are a huge burden for working Americans, they can also be a drain on seniors’ limited resources. If you’re worried about affording your golden years, it pays to set yourself up with a number of income sources that the IRS can’t tax you on later in life. Here are a few options that fall into this category.

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What Are Your Responsibilities

If you provide benefits to your employees, you always have to go through the same steps. If a step does not apply to you, skip it and go on to the next step:

• determine if the benefit is taxable
• calculate the value of the benefit
• calculate payroll deductions

In this guide, “employee” includes an individual who holds an office, unless otherwise noted.

Determine if the benefit is taxable

Your first step is to determine whether the benefit you provide to your employee is taxable and has to be included in their employment income when the benefit is received or enjoyed.

Whether or not a benefit is taxable depends on whether an employee or officer receives an economic advantage that can be measured in money, and whether that individual is the primary beneficiary of the benefit.

For more information on the term primary beneficiary, see paragraphs 2.14 and 2.23 to 2.25 of Income Tax Folio S2-F3-C2, Benefits and Allowances Received from Employment. For some common examples of taxable benefits, see Chapters 2 to 4 of this guide.

The benefit may be paid in cash , or provided in a manner other than cash, such as a parking space or a gift certificate. For more information and examples, go to Pensionable and insurable earnings.

The manner in which you pay or provide the benefit to your employee will affect the payroll deductions you have to withhold. For more information, see Calculate payroll deductions.

Calculate the value of the benefit

You do not have to include the GST/HST for:

Note

Tfsas Have Contribution Limits

A brokerage account with no tax liabilities sounds amazing, but it comes with one major caveat: you can only contribute so much a year.

The Canada Revenue Agency caps your annual contributions at a preset amount, which they call your contribution room. Every year the CRA will revisit the annual TFSA limit to see if they need to adjust it for inflation. For example, the maximum contribution limit for 2018 was $5,500, whereas for 2021, it increased to $6,000.

What happens if you contribute more than the annual limit?

First, the CRA will notify you that youve over-contributed, giving you some time to fix the funds in your account. If you dont remove the excess, theyll hit you with a penalty: a 1% monthly charge on your above-contribution amount.

For example, if you contributed $9,000 this year instead of $6,000, youd pay 1% of $3,000 for every month you dont remove the extra $3,000.

Do earnings from investments affect your contribution space?

No. Your contribution space is only affected by the amount of money you contribute directly. Capital gains, interest, and dividends dont reduce how much space you have.

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Diversifying By Tax Treatment

Holding your investments in the most tax-appropriate type of account can complement your savings plans by helping to reduce taxes .1 Spreading your investments across accounts with different tax treatments can also give you more flexibility in managing your taxes when you start drawing from your savings in retirement. Call it “tax diversification.”

Diversifying by tax treatment can be especially important if youre uncertain about the tax bracket you’ll end up in down the road. For example, by investing in a taxable brokerage account, and then splitting your retirement-savings contributions between a tax-deferred IRA or 401 and an after-tax Roth account, you would have more options for managing your income in retirement, regardless of your tax bracket.

So, if your goal was to minimize your overall tax burden, you could focus on taking tax-free municipal bond income, qualified dividends, and long-term capital gains from your taxable accounts and tax-free income from your Roth accounts. Then you could take only enough money from your taxable IRA or 401 to cover your spending needs or satisfy required minimum distributions, if applicable.

Of course, this is just one approach. Some investors may prefer to rely on their taxable and tax-deferred accounts for income, and leave their tax-free Roth savings to continue growing for as long as possible.

Can You Open More Than One Tfsa

You can open as many TFSAs as you like. But be careful no matter how many TFSAs you hold, your contribution space never changes. Whether you have one TFSA or five, your annual and lifetime limits are always the same. So, if your annual TFSA limit is $6,000, and you have five TFSAs, you can contribute $6,000 across all five but no more than the annual cap.

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Do You Qualify To Open And Contribute To An Ira

Before you land on a traditional IRA vs. brokerage account, you’ll need to find out if you qualify to open and contribute to an IRA. The answer depends on the type of IRA you’re talking about, as well as a few other factors.

To be clear, everyone can open and contribute to a traditional IRA. However, the ability to take the deduction, which is the main reason to use a traditional IRA vs. brokerage account, is limited in some cases. If you don’t have access to an employer’s retirement plan, there’s no restriction — you can take the traditional IRA deduction regardless of how much money you earn.

On the other hand, if you can participate in an employer’s plan, the ability to take the traditional IRA deduction is restricted. If you have a retirement plan at work, your adjusted gross income, or AGI, needs to be less than the limit for your filing status to take the deduction:

We’re firm believers in the Golden Rule, which is why editorial opinions are ours alone and have not been previously reviewed, approved, or endorsed by included advertisers. The Ascent does not cover all offers on the market. Editorial content from The Ascent is separate from The Motley Fool editorial content and is created by a different analyst team. The Motley Fool has a Disclosure Policy. The Author and/or The Motley Fool may have an interest in companies mentioned.

The Ascent is a Motley Fool service that rates and reviews essential products for your everyday money matters.

Find Out Whether Your Pension Ira Or Other Retirement Income Is Taxable

Is retirement income taxable? It depends on where that income comes from and how much of it you will have, as well as where you live.

The major types of retirement income are either taxable, partially taxable, or tax-free. Learn which types of retirement income you will need to pay tax on, including pensions, retirement plans, Roth IRAs, and more.

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How To Claim A Refund

To claim a refund, you must:

• send your request in writing
• attach the appropriate documents detailing the information relating to the acquisition and disposition of the non-qualified or prohibited property .

• name and description of the property
• number of shares or units
• date the property was acquired or became nonqualified or prohibited property
• date of the disposition or the date that the property became qualified or ceased to be prohibited

If the disposition took place in the same year as the acquisition, enter the refundable amount on the line in Section 2 of the TFSA return, and attach the documents to your return. If the property disposed of was acquired in a previous year, send your request and the documents to:

TFSA Processing Unit

Post Office Box 14000, Station MainWinnipeg MB R3C 3M2

Premiums Under Provincial Hospitalization Medical Care Insurance And Certain Government Of Canada Plans

You may be paying premiums or contributing to a provincial or territorial hospital or medical care insurance plan for an employee. The amount you pay is considered a taxable benefit for the employee. Report this benefit in box 14, “Employment income,” and in the “Other information,” area under code 40 at the bottom of the employee’s T4 slip. If you have to make payments to such a plan for amounts other than premiums or contributions for the employee, they are not considered a taxable benefit for the employee.

If you are the former employer of an employee who has retired, any amount you pay as a contribution to a provincial or territorial health services insurance plan for the retired employee is a taxable benefit.

Report this benefit under code 118, “Medical premium benefits,” in the “Other information” area at the bottom of the T4A slip.

Any amount that the federal government pays for premiums under a hospital or medical care insurance plan for its employees and their dependants serving outside Canada is a taxable benefit. This also applies to dependants of members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Canadian Forces serving outside Canada.

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Tool Reimbursement Or Allowance

If you reimburse or provide an allowance to your employees to offset the cost of tools that they need for their job or you pay for their tools, the amount of the payment is a taxable benefit and should be included in the employees’ income.

When employed tradespersons file their income tax and benefit return, they may be able to deduct part of the cost of eligible tools they bought to earn employment income as a tradesperson.

Employers have to fill out and sign Form T2200, Declaration of Conditions of Employment, to certify that the employee must acquire these tools as a condition of, and for use in their employment.

For more information, see Guide T4044, Employment Expenses.

Municipal Officer’s Expense Allowance

A municipal corporation or board may pay a non-accountable expense allowance to an elected officer to perform the duties of that office.

For 2019 and later tax years, the full amount of this non-accountable allowance is a taxable benefit. Enter it in box 14, Employment income, and in the Other information area under code 40 at the bottom of the employees T4 slip.

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Designation Of An Exempt Contribution By A Survivor

If designated as a beneficiary, the survivor has the option to contribute and designate all or a portion of a survivor payment as an exempt contribution to their own TFSA, without affecting their own unused TFSA contribution room, subject to certain conditions and limits.

Beneficiaries who receive a payment from the deceased holder’s TFSA cannot contribute and designate any amount as an exempt contribution.

For the survivor to designate an exempt contribution, the amount must be received and contributed to their TFSA during the rollover period. Also, the survivor must designate their survivor payments as an exempt contribution on Form RC240, Designation of an Exempt Contribution Tax-Free Savings Account , and send the designation within 30 days after the day the contribution is made or at a later time as permitted by the Minister of National Revenue.

The total exempt contributions designated during the rollover period cannot exceed the FMV of the deceased holder’s TFSA at the time of death.

Generally, if the TFSA of the deceased holder includes an excess TFSA amount at the time of death, if payments are being received by more than one survivor, or if the survivor payment and/or the contribution is made after the rollover period, no amount of the survivor payment can be designated as an exempt contribution. If any of these circumstances are present, call us to find out whether a designation can still be made.

Electing Under Section 217

As a non-resident of Canada, you may have received the following types of income in 2020:

• old age security pension
• registered supplementary unemployment benefit plan payments
• deferred profit-sharing plan payments
• amounts received from a retirement compensation arrangement or the purchase price of an interest in a retirement compensation arrangement
• prescribed benefits under a government assistance program
• Auto Pact benefits

If so, you may be able to report this income on a Canadian tax return for 2020 and pay tax using an alternative method. Choosing to send this return is called “Electing under section 217 of the Income Tax Act.” By doing this, you may receive a refund of some or all of the non-resident tax withheld.

To file a section 217 tax return, use the Income Tax and Benefit Guide for Non-Residents and Deemed Residents of Canada, which includes the return and schedules you need.

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