Do It Yourself TFSA Withdrawals | Tax Free Savings Accounts | Discussion forum

3oakwest said
A financial institution recently advertised free do it yourself withdrawals from a TFSA account.

I cannot remember who it was, can anyone help me.  

Do you mean TFSA transfers or withdrawals? Withdrawals are typically free at nearly every financial institution. It's the transfers whereby the number of FIs that don't charge transfer out fees is very small (Achieva Financial, Hubert Financial, and Oaken Financial are the three that come to mind; possibly Peoples Trust, but I haven't checked).

Cheers,
Doug

3oakwest said
It wasn't for transfers, it's to just draw money out of your TFSA.
Obviously it must be a cash account. Possibly I read it wrong.  

Not sure if this what you may be referencing, but most online banking software will not let you make a TFSA (or RSP for that matter) withdrawal without calling in and speaking to a real person who has to manually do it for them.

The idea is to prevent an inattentive user from keying in wrong information or the wrong account and accidentally triggering a taxable event by mistake, because once it's done, it's done, and you don't get do-overs with CRA.

Maybe you saw something somewhere where some FI has relaxed that a bit and set their system up to allow withdrawals while only giving you a big butt warning instead? I'd consider that a step backwards personally

For TFSA withdrawal:

Itrade - you can do it all yourself online.

Accelerate - they want the request in writing, signed by the account holder. Can email a PDF of request.

Outlook financial - they want the request done using their form, signed by the account holder. Have to snail mail it.

These are for sure experiences.

I have a hunch Hubert would be same.....all online....no intervention for TFSA. But when I started to pull RRIF funds out my self I had to ask Hubert by chat to move funds from RRSP to RRIF. Once that was done I was on my own.