@calmmoneycoach: SINGLES AND THE FINAL RETURN A $500,000 RRIF costs your estate about $225,000 in Ontario. Here's every province. For a single person, the whole RRIF lands on one final return. The tax doesn't leave when you leave the RRSP alone. It waits. Three things the video doesn't have room for. One. The successor annuitant trick, and it is genuinely a trick. Subsection 146.3(6) only fires when the last annuitant dies. Name your spouse successor annuitant and they become annuitant of the same RRIF, so nothing is deemed received and the RRIF never appears on your final return at all. An unmatured RRSP has no equivalent mechanism, so there the spouse takes a refund of premiums and transfers under 60(l). If you're partnered and you've only named a beneficiary rather than a successor annuitant, that's a five-minute fix worth making. Two. Section 160.2. If a RRIF goes to a named beneficiary, no tax is withheld on the way out, and 160.2 makes that beneficiary jointly and severally liable for the deceased's tax. Somebody receives $200,000, spends it, and gets a bill later. It's been litigated: O'Callaghan v The Queen, 2016 TCC 169. Three. The post-death decline election, 146.3(6.3). If the RRIF falls in value between death and wind-up, the legal representative can carry that loss back onto the final return, generally only if the fund is wound up by the end of the year after death. Real money in a falling market and almost nobody claims it. The numbers, 2026, a $500,000 RRIF as the only income on a final return: Alberta $201,900, BC $218,500, Ontario $225,039, Quebec $234,500, Nova Scotia $234,916. If other income already pushed the deceased to the top rate, every one of those runs $240,000 to $270,000. The reason it's so brutal is that $500,000 clears the top federal bracket at $258,482 on its own, so roughly half the account is taxed at the highest rate in the country no matter how modest the life was. Probate is separate and provincial. Nova Scotia is the highest marginal rate in Canada at 1.695 percent above $100,000, about $16,258 on a million-dollar estate. Ontario is 1.5 percent above a $50,000 exemption, $14,250. BC is 1.4 percent above $50,000 plus a $200 filing fee, $13,650. Quebec charges nothing on value, and a notarial will is an authentic act that doesn't get probated at all. This decision is close to irreversible once you're gone, so run it with a fee-only planner and a tax professional. Good planning is a love letter to whoever's left. Educational only, not advice. Rates and probate differ by province. Verify before acting.

Brian | Calm Money Coach

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Saturday 22 August 2026 15:07:30 GMT