The blind spots

How many of these has anybody actually asked you?

Seven problems, and not one of them is exotic. They turn up on files where the accountant did good work and the advisor did good work and nobody ever read both at once. Each one starts with a question and ends with a number, and every number comes either from paper you already have in a drawer or from a source we name underneath it. Start with whichever one you recognised.

Figures are British Columbia unless the page says otherwise. Alberta and Ontario differ, and every rate on this site re-confirms each January.

  1. Corporate structure

    There are four ways out of your corporation. Which one were you shown?

    The cash has to leave by one of those doors, and the spread between the widest and the narrowest is the whole of it.

    53.50% to nil
    The spread between the widest door and the narrowest

  2. Tax

    Your RRSP deduction was a loan. Did anyone read you the terms?

    A deduction does not save the tax. It moves it, to a rate neither of you has seen yet.

    4.5 years
    Of retirement income it takes to hand the deferral back, at every bracket

  3. Estate

    Canada has no estate tax. So why do families lose three quarters of it?

    There is no estate tax and no gift tax here. The bill arrives from two other places instead, and on a lot of files from a third.

    $1,215,000
    What reaches the family from $5,000,000 of retained earnings, with no plan in place

  4. Business owners

    If your co-owner dies tonight, who owns their half tomorrow?

    The shares do not evaporate. They go somewhere, and if nothing was written down they go to an estate.

    $10,269
    The annual difference in earnings required to send the same $10,000 premium

  5. Protection

    You insured the house and the car. What about the likely one?

    Most people carry cover against the things least likely to happen to them, and nothing against the thing most likely to.

    1 in 3
    Critical illness before sixty-five. A planning figure, and it carries a verify flag.

  6. Retirement income

    Which year's income is your OAS deposit actually reading?

    The clawback is already reading a return you filed two years ago, which sounds like a nuisance and is the most useful thing about it.

    15 cents
    Of OAS taken back for every dollar of net income above the floor

  7. Retirement

    Why does your RRSP shelter less of your income every year you succeed?

    RRSP room is eighteen percent of earned income up to a dollar cap, and the cap does not move with you.

    9.7%
    What the 2026 RRSP cap actually shelters at $350,000 of T4 income

Before you read one

What if none of these is you?

Then that is worth knowing too, and it is a shorter conversation than the alternative. A fair number of the structures we are asked to look at are already doing what they should be doing. Somebody set them up carefully, the coverage matches the liability, the money is coming out of the corporation the right way, and the honest answer is to change nothing.

Every one of the pages above carries a paragraph saying when that problem is not a problem. Those paragraphs are not there for balance. They are there because a page that cannot say when it is wrong is not worth reading.

Which one did you read twice?

That is usually the one. Fifteen minutes on the phone is enough to find out whether it is actually happening on your file or whether it only sounded like it. You do not have to send anything to book the call, and nothing gets sent to you afterwards.

Book fifteen minutesNo pitch on the first call. If there is nothing worth fixing, we will tell you that.

Or call (604) 537-5444

Book a 15-minute call