T2204A is no where to be found | Income tax filing | Discussion forum

From govt of Canada website:

“Line 323 – Your tuition, education, and textbook amounts
The tuition, education, and textbook amounts allow you to reduce any income tax you may owe. Effective January 1, 2017, the federal education and textbook tax credits were eliminated. This measure did not eliminate the tuition tax credit, and it does not affect the ability to carry forward unused education and textbook credit amounts from years prior to 2017.

Your educational institution will provide you with a slip that has the total eligible tuition fees paid as well as the months you were enrolled either part-time or full-time.”

I suggest you contact your school directly to find the t2202a form.

From: https://www.bdo.ca/en-ca/insights/tax/tax-articles/recent-tax-credit-changes-may-affect-students-for-2017/

“Ontario: In its 2016 budget, the Ontario government announced that it would be eliminating both the Ontario tuition and education tax credits in 2017. Effective for 2017, Ontario students will be able to claim the provincial tuition tax credit for eligible tuition paid in respect of studies up to and including September 4, 2017, and will be able to claim the education tax credit for months of study before September 2017. The eligible portion of 2017 tax credits will continue to be transferable to a qualifying family member. Note, however, only tax filers who are resident in Ontario on December 31, 2017, and who have unused Ontario tuition and education tax credits available for carry-forward, will be permitted to claim the credits in future years.”

Can anyone confirm that you have to claim your T2202A in the year it is issued?

SimpleTax didn't bring up the form automatically for me (I guess that's one of the downsides to not having an interview-style tax preparation tool). When I brought up the T2202A form manually, it seems that I do, according to the CRA's Students and Income Tax Guide 2017, Chapter 5:

Chapter 5 – Transfer or carry forward amount
You have to claim your current year’s federal tuition fees, and applicable provincial and territorial tuition, education and textbook amounts, first on your own return, even if someone else paid your fees. The amount you must use on your own tax return is equal to the amount of credit required to reduce the taxes you owe. The calculation for this amount is included on Schedule 11. Even if you have no tax to pay and you are transferring part of your current year’s federal tuition fees, or applicable provincial and territorial tuition, education and textbook amounts, file your return and a filled out Schedule 11 so the CRA can update its records with your unused amounts available to carry forward to other years.

If you are transferring an amount to a designated individual, only transfer the amount this person can use. This way, you can carry forward as much as possible to use in a future year.

Once you have filled out Schedule 11, if you still have an unused amount available, you can now choose one of the following options.

I wish I'd known that, probably could've gotten away without having to pay the extra tax that wasn't deducted without an RRSP contribution. Oh well, still, that further reduced my effective tax rate to ~4.09-4.11%. Without the RRSP contribution, it was probably ~5%. Mind you, I don't have to use the RRSP deduction. Also, I'm wondering if maybe RRSPs could be used like a sort of "extended TFSA"...make the contributions, but don't claim the deduction so when you withdraw from them, you would state that you never received a corresponding tax deduction, and enjoy the benefit of the tax-free growth.

Loonie, your personal advice would be welcome.

Also, anyone know if the B.C. education and textbook amount is still valid from Sept. 2017-Dec. 2017, inclusive?

Cheers,
Doug

Doug said
… Also, I'm wondering if maybe RRSPs could be used like a sort of "extended TFSA"...make the contributions, but don't claim the deduction so when you withdraw from them, you would state that you never received a corresponding tax deduction, and enjoy the benefit of the tax-free growth.
…

Still need to report the RRSP contribution on next Schedule 7. But, yes, you can.

A previous post mentioned that.

Bill said
CRA no longer has its own site, it's part of Canada.ca. I find if I google startingmy search with "cra" it takes me to the cra section of Canada.ca.  

Yeah, that's the federal government's new web initiative to harmonize all federal government departments and agencies under "canada.ca" instead of "subdomain.gc.ca". I shouldn't blame the Trudeau government for this, though they did approve it, as I suspect it was likely thought up by a senior federal bureaucrat. 🙂

Cheers,
Doug

Norman1 said
Still need to report the RRSP contribution on next Schedule 7. But, yes, you can.

A previous post mentioned that.  

Thanks, Norman. I figured you would know for sure and respond.

To be clear, I wasn't meaning about the over-contribution, which can't be deducted until you have contribution room again, but still staying within one's contribution room. In that case, those undeducted amounts would show up in your line (B) of your "RRSP contribution calculation area" of your next Notice of Assessment but that that area could be over $2000, if the undeducted amounts do not exceed whatever one's contribution room?

How would that work on withdrawals? Obviously the issuers wouldn't know what you've deducted and not deducted so likely no reporting on a t-slip to indicate the withdrawals were on undeducted contributions (and thus not subject to tax). Is there a line on the RRSP/RRIF withdrawal area of one's tax return to indicate that these funds have not previously been deducted, so an offsetting tax credit is received?

Cheers,
Doug

Looks like it's a T746 form to claim the offsetting credit on withdrawals from an RSP on undeducted RSP contributions. Not a bad strategy actually, especially for those that don't expect their post-retirement income to be materially less than their pre-retirement income, or perhaps even for those that expect their post-retirement income to be higher than their pre-retirement income (such as me, who has been a diligent saver, has no spouse, and no kids - guess that makes me a SINK?)? (My projections, assuming a modest 3-6% average annual investment return, model me earning anywhere from $30-50,000 in employment income to retirement and then having to withdraw enough from my RSP/RIF to earn between $50-70,000 from all sources, excluding TFSA income of course since that's non-taxable, post-retirement. Is that situation less common?)

How would that work for withdrawals of undeducted RSP contributions from a RIF? Does the T746 election apply to the RIF withdrawal forms as well, or would that matter be settled upon converting one's RSP to a RIF (i.e., by way of specifying any undeducted amounts that the person still doesn't wish to deduct upon conversion)? Edit: Even if there's no option built-in to RIF withdrawals or an RSP conversion, there's an easy fix for that scenario - just withdraw all the undeducted RSP contributions before conversion and complete the T746 to claim the offsetting credit.

Loonie, this appears to be a decent workaround to make RSPs more palatable for you. 🙂

Broader discussion: should the federal government just get rid of RRSPs completely (not grandfathered/existing ones, just don't allow new contributions), save a shitload on tax expenditures (the single biggest cost to the public treasury, I believe), and increase the TFSA limit to $15-20,000 instead? I wouldn't want to see them eliminated without such an increase because people like me don't have DB pension plans anymore like the Boomers and whatever the pre-Boomer generation was called (there's a name, but I forget and do we have any of the pre-Boomer generation on this board?) need either a tax-free and/or tax-deferred savings vehicle of some kind.

The TFSA could then be renamed an Investment Retirement Account ("IRA"), similar to the U.S. IRAs, but retain their existing structure.

Cheers,
Doug

Doug said

Related to the above, who here uses the Auto-Fill My Return function? I personally like the task of entering and verifying my t-slip information so I don't  

I have for a few years. Last year was different as I now have a iMac and could not use Turbo Tax as the program does not reside on the computer which I don’t like. So I used Studio Tax. It is a great package and for me only one little twist...you have to enter GICs on each spouses return and then do your 50-50 where as Turbo Tax did it for you (the split moved over to spouse automatically). So when I did auto fill on Studio Tax not all my forms were on CRA even though I had received paper copies in the mail...and.....for some reason I was not allowed to auto fill my wife’s T slips. So auto fill it not as slick as it could be??

because people like me don't have DB pension plans anymore

Don’t think a DB pension is bulletproof and some of the new matching plans are far better and remain in the hands of the employee, not the company, nor a pension plan management company.

In reverse order, responses as follows:

Bill, I'm not saying get rid of the contribution room, but replace it with extra TFSA room instead. Like you, I don't benefit from a company-sponsored DC or DB pension plan, but I would be very happy with just a TFSA, if the contribution from my RRSP was added to my TFSA room.

On the first point, I think you're misunderstanding my query, maybe. Perhaps you're thinking about "unused contribution room"? In this case, I would be using the contribution room, but not the deduction. Consequently, when I withdraw those funds from RSP or RIF, while withholding tax would apply, I would want to get that withholding tax back because I have not used the tax deduction. As far as I can tell, a T756 is required. Perhaps Norman (or maybe Loonie) can add clarity here?

Cheers,
Doug