Build a retirement income plan that turns your RRSPs, TFSAs, and pension into reliable, tax-efficient income for life.
For incorporated physicians and dentists, retirement rarely means winding down your professional corporation entirely. Many doctors keep their corporation, or a holding company that receives the proceeds from selling their practice, as a tax-efficient tool for retirement income, drawing dividends gradually instead of one large taxable payout. Here's a detail that surprises most doctors: once you and your spouse are both 65 or older, the Tax on Split Income (TOSI) rules generally no longer apply to dividends paid to that spouse. That opens the door to legitimately splitting corporate income between you in retirement, something the TOSI rules restrict while you're younger and still actively working.
By retirement, many physicians' holding companies have grown substantially from years of retained earnings, investment growth, and the eventual sale of a practice, sometimes reaching a value well into seven figures. For high-net-worth doctors, an estate freeze becomes a valuable tool at this stage: you exchange your common shares for fixed-value preferred shares, locking in today's value for tax purposes while future growth flows to your children or a family trust. We also see doctors make one recurring mistake: putting most or all of their savings into an RRSP. A large RRSP means a large, fully taxable withdrawal later, often pushing you into a higher tax bracket in retirement. We help physicians build a withdrawal strategy that draws from RRSPs, TFSAs, and their corporation in the right order each year, so no single account is taxed harder than it needs to be, often saving hundreds of thousands of dollars in unnecessary tax over a retirement.
Most people approaching retirement draw from several sources at once: CPP, OAS, RRSPs or RRIFs, TFSAs, and often non-registered savings or corporate dividends. Each has its own tax rules and its own ideal timing. Drawn in the wrong order or the wrong amounts, they can push you into a higher tax bracket than necessary or trigger an OAS clawback you didn't need to pay. We build a year-by-year withdrawal plan that draws from the right accounts at the right time, so your income stays tax-efficient not just this year, but for the two or three decades your retirement may last.
If you own a business, your retirement plan probably doesn't look like a typical employee's. Your business may be your largest asset, and how you extract value from it, through a sale, a wind-down, or an ongoing holding company, has a major impact on how much of it you actually keep. We help business owners plan years ahead of a transition: structuring share ownership to make full use of the Lifetime Capital Gains Exemption, deciding whether to keep a holding company for ongoing investment income, and coordinating with your accountant and lawyer so the plan works on paper and in practice.
Earlier than most people think. Decisions made five to ten years before retirement, like how you structure your corporation, when you start drawing CPP, or how your savings are split between registered and non-registered accounts, tend to matter far more than decisions made in the final year or two. That said, it's never too late for a plan to help. Whether you're a decade out or already retired and want a second opinion on your income strategy, we'll start with a clear picture of exactly where you stand today.
We start with a conversation about your goals, not a product pitch. From there, we build a retirement income plan tailored to your accounts, your corporation (if you have one), and your timeline, then walk you through it in plain language until it makes sense. Your plan isn't a one-time document. We meet annually to review it against your actual numbers, adjust for tax law changes, and keep you on track as your life and your retirement get closer.
We can help you make the most of your income, no matter what stage of your career you’re at. Call us today to set up a meeting to get started!
