Jerome Bitun

Here are the personal tax changes from the Federal Budget yesterday. TFSA The TFSA was introduced in 2009 as a way to save and invest for your future on a tax exempt basis. Contributions to a TFSA is not tax deductible but gains, income and withdrawals are tax free. Originally, the TFSA started with a $5,000 limit subject to inflation adjustments of $500 increments. Because of this, the TFSA limit from 2009 to 2012 was at $5,000, but changed to $5,500 from 2013 to 2014. The new 2015 budget proposes to increase the TFSA annual contribution limit to $10,000 effective immediately and going forward. However, the annual contribution limit will no longer be indexed to inflation but will be increased only if legislated. So if you have never contributed into a TFSA, you can now contribute up to $41,000 as long as you have been 18 years old since 2009. You can invest your TFSA into a variety of investments like stocks, bonds, GICs, mutual funds and segregated funds. RRIF A RRIF i...

Happy New Year! I apologize for not writing lately. I've been busy and had not had time to write anything. Also, there hasn't really been much news to report so I haven't had anything to write about. However, I want to inform you of two things today which would be important going forward. Inflation and new TFSA limits. Inflation Inflation is defined as a general increase in prices and fall in the purchasing value of money. As I have discussed before, the biggest risk we all face since the financial crisis of 2008 is going to be inflation. We all know now that market risk is there (up and down of the stock market). But for the longest time, we've never really had to deal with a lot of inflation since prices were quite stable from 1990 to 2002. We started seeing inflation after gold and oil went up in price. Most of us ignore it, but now it's impossible to ignore. Everything cost a lot more and most things feels like it cost double what it was 10 years ago...