Tax Strategies

Bequeathing the family cottage

In my last column, I discussed the two most basic elements of estate planning — wills and powers of attorney — and how they affect the intergenerational transfer of wealth that your clients must eventually deal with. Now let’s look at one of the more common intergenerational asset transfers — the family cottage. Many of […]

By Michelle Munro |August 5, 2009

6 min read

Life

How to overfund UL

“What?” you might say, “I didn’t know universal life insurance (UL) had an expiry date!” Relax. You’re right. UL doesn’t come with an expiry date. As long as you pay the premiums on time, you’re covered. “But if lifelong payment seems like a long commitment, universal life has a clause—quick-pay UL insurance—that allows the insured […]

By Jim Otar |August 1, 2009

3 min read

Tax Strategies

Refinancing spousal loans

Now that the CRA has set the prescribed interest rate at a historical low of 1%, you may be setting up spousal loans for clients to achieve income splitting. You may also be faced with the challenge of trying to refinance existing spousal loans to access the new, lower CRA prescribed rate. (See previous article […]

By Carol Bezaire |July 14, 2009

4 min read

Estate Planning

Estate planning 101

A reluctance to tackle touchy subjects can prove costly. I remember a long-ago conversation with one of my earliest personal tax clients about aging parents and estate planning. The client — let’s call him Bob — was the only child of a well-to-do couple. Bob had no children of his own, and was relatively well […]

By Michelle Munro |July 6, 2009

5 min read

Employment versus self-employment

Alex recently lost his job with a local plumbing company. After several weeks off, he was approached by a competing firm, Charlie’s Plumbing Agency, with an offer for his services. The offer was an interesting one — Alex could choose to work as part of a contract of service, or he could enter into a […]

6 min read

Taxing transaction fees

I’m asked regularly about whether commissions received by an advisor on the sale of life insurance and/or investment products for his or her own personal use are taxable. A 2003 tax case—Delisle v The Queen, 2003 TCC 751—dealt with such an advisor. Gilbert Delisle, an executive at Sun Life, became self-employed after leaving in July […]

3 min read

Income planning case studies

Proper retirement planning requires planning for the worst, so deciding what to focus on in a retirement plan is no easy task. More often than not, financial planners think in terms of accumulation. But, once you switch from the accumulation stage to the distribution stage, the math is entirely different. While you can talk about […]

By Jim Otar |April 7, 2009

4 min read

How income splitting produces tax savings

Any tax-planning strategy has but a simple goal: to increase the amount of money left in one’s pocket. In the case of couples, whether they are married or living in a common-law arrangement (including same-sex couples), this could mean increasing the combined after-tax income of the couple. When the spouses are in different marginal tax […]

6 min read

U.S. pensions and RRSP transfers

In both Canada and the United States, many employers are reducing their workforce numbers. If you have clients who have left jobs in the U.S. to resettle in Canada, you may be able to help them amalgamate their cross-border retirement plans. Under the right circumstances, this can simplify retirement planning and reduce or eliminate the […]

4 min read

Helping clients invest tax-efficiently

No one ever said that choosing investments is a simple business. For any investor, several factors need to be considered, including age, investment objectives and one’s willingness and ability to tolerate risk. There’s also the impact of taxes on investment returns — the focus of this column. Tax treatments can enhance or diminish returns from […]

5 min read