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2022 CPC Leadership Discussion: Et tu Redeux

Our pension plans cannot return any better than that fixed percentage of our salary based on service, and when I and my wife both die it does with us.

But that's not what he said. When both the pensioner and spouse die, so does the pension.

Right.

And that's not what I said.

When the member's spouse passes away, and the member re-marries.

AKA Your "post-retirement-date-spouse".

If You Die After Retirement

1. Eligible spouse – Your retirement-date spouse (or post-retirement-date spouse if there is no eligible retirement-date spouse) will receive a survivor pension.













 
That's not how any of that works at all.

Using a corporation to defer tax on income until you're retired (or semi-retired) and have a lower marginal tax rate at the personal level is a super common tax planning tool used by almost any owner-managed business after maxing out RRSPs (and sometimes TFSAs based on their financial goals).

It's not actually that much more tax efficient. There are a ton of things built into the corporate tax system such as Part I Refundable and Part IV taxes that prevent it from being much more tax efficient than just investing it personally. The biggest reason it's done for most people is actually creditor protection. Keeping those savings in a different corporation helps ensure if they get sued for any reason, or the PC runs into creditor issues, it's a lot harder for creditors to make a claim against those savings.

Anybody operating through a PC can be personally liable for their professional mistakes, and owner-managers who are not PCs can still be personally liable for things that happen within their operating corp, allowing the person who slips on ice walking in the vicinity of their place of business to potentially sue not just their corp but also the owner-manager.

Part I refundable and Part IV tax (which is also essentially a refundable tax) largely takes away the tax deferral opportunity. Essentially they get taxed at the highest marginal rates on any income earned by those investments, so it stops them from being able to reinvest it anymore than a normal person would be able to. When they pay it to the shareholder (themselves) as a dividend, then the corp receives the refundable tax back.

The only companies that can really benefit from super complex tax planning are a small fraction of the companies that are going to harmed by this. They can benefit from that tax planning due to the gross numbers more than anything. The only way to close those loopholes is actually to reduce the corporate rate to 0% so we can get rid of all the silliness of "integration" which is why these openings occur in the first place. Come to grips with the fact that a corporation can't actually pay taxes - only the individual shareholders - and then tax their dividends at 100% instead of this silly "gross-up and tax credit" system which is literally just a bunch of smoke and mirrors designed to ensure the the effective marginal tax rate paid at the personal level is the same as if there was a 0% corporate tax rate and the shareholder was paying tax on their dividends at 100%, and is only employed because it's politically unpopular to have a 0% corporate tax rate (despite it's massive benefits).



Doctor's don't really sell their practices anymore and most surgeons/specialist use the hospital's equipment and just get paid for their actual service fee.

It's not worth it for a new doctor to buy an existing practice because the demand is so high - they can just set up shop anywhere and practically don't even need to advertise.



There is nothing stopping anybody from creating an InvestCo and investing from within there. I would be happy to help you set up a HoldCo to do your investing from if you think the fees will be worth it. We can do the analysis for you to determine what tax benefits you would receive and compare them to the cost of maintaining it.

Hint: Unless you're doing it for reasons like creditor protection, you'll quickly find you probably can't even really save the $2000 or $3000 in taxes a year to make it worth the professional fees and are better off just investing it in a self-directed fund, with all of your capital gains-oriented investments staying in the taxable account and your income-based investments in the RRSP/TFSA accounts..



Using a corporation to provide a manner in which they can limit their financial liability only to the what they've invested in the business, and not having the liability extend to their personal financial security unless there is something negligent afoot, is pretty important if you actually want any form of entrepreneurship to occur - whether it's a doctor or the next Tesla. That professionals also have to worry about additional personal liability - how does that contribute to an argument that it's a tax dodge? I'm not really sure what you're argument was there?

The most the regulatory body can do is take your license away. If they levy a fine you don't want to pay, you can just leave the profession and they can't do shit. The regulatory body can't do shit about your InvestCo and seize all your savings. But yes, certain professionals do have more liability, which makes it all the more important to have an InvestCo, not less important.

The capital gains increase is bad news. You've got the Bank of Canada sounding the alarm bells over Canada's alarmingly low productivity and a housing affordability crisis (most developers plan largely around creating capital gains in the long-term), and now the government is creating policy based on tricking the uninformed voter into thinking the "rich" just have it too good and need pay a "more fair share" (as if their extremely disproportionate share of all taxes paid isn't already... disproportionate), and you're lapping it all up like a fat kid eating cake.

Personally I've moved half of my investments into US dollars (and all my investmests are in US companies/funds) because Canada is a sinking ship and our dollar is reflecting that and it's only going to get worse.

Wow. That was an impressive post.
 
But that's not what he said. When both the pensioner and spouse die, so does the pension. It's a complex area, but if both die in a fiery crash a week after he retires, I'm not sure that there is a commuted value that falls to the estate. Even if only the pensioner dies, the spousal survivor entitlement is a fixed percentage, depending on the plan and election, but it's typically not what the pensioner was entitled to.


I think there may be more to the story. If (and I don't know this) Elmvale is considered an underserviced rural area, the doctor gets extra funding, but the reality is, Barrie to Elmvale is about 25km, and the doctor will no doubt carry her current patient roster with her. Most patients would likely follow her rather than trying to find a new doctor, which means the rural area gets no net gain, but she gets more money. The municipality gets a rent-paying tenant at their clinic but that's about the extent of the benefit.

We have something similar going on up here. We live in an underserviced area and have a small medical clinic. A doctor from the the nearby city is moving his practice to the clinic. He gets more money, but is bringing his full patient roster with him, so we're still without a doctor.




I stand to be corrected, but the way I understand it for Ontario, doctors were previously prohibited from incorporating but this was changed a number years ago as an alternative when the province refused to give them a raise.
there seems to be and has been a lot of funny things going on with the doctor part of the medical system and yet my doctor who is relatively young still seems committed to Canada

Elmvale is an underserviced area with a retirement home but i think Barrie is considered underserviced as well. Is any area not? My understanding is that the municipality was covering the costs, hard to say about patients but perhaps the MofH was concerned that not all patients from Barrie would be able to make the trek to Elmvale?
 
< snip > perhaps the MofH was concerned that not all patients from Barrie would be able to make the trek to Elmvale?

Sometimes even longer distances for health care.

April 25, 2024

Saskatoon to Toronto.

 
Sometimes even longer distances for health care.

April 25, 2024

Saskatoon to Toronto.

We had to go to Boston in the 1970s and bug out of the hospital before they could tag us with the bill. Now you could just go to Toronto. Sometimes we expect too much
 
there seems to be and has been a lot of funny things going on with the doctor part of the medical system and yet my doctor who is relatively young still seems committed to Canada

Elmvale is an underserviced area with a retirement home but i think Barrie is considered underserviced as well. Is any area not? My understanding is that the municipality was covering the costs, hard to say about patients but perhaps the MofH was concerned that not all patients from Barrie would be able to make the trek to Elmvale?
Ya, who knows what the Ministry's motivation was. You're quite right that, with an estimated 2.3 million people without a doctor, all of Ontario is underserviced. I tried to find a list of "medically underserviced areas" but was unable, but do know there is a funding envelope for servicing rural areas.

I'm pretty sure my doctor is dipping into that well. He services a rural area from the GTA (about 2-ish hours away) but only physically attends once a week (all other appointments are virtual) and has a local clinic that he pays rent /access for. That gives him a local address which probably satisfies a Ministry condition. I'm now completely out of the area but he is still my doctor because I can't find one here.

And that's not what I said.
Fair enough, but you used a quote of certain circumstance to introduced a new one. The pension won't "live on" if both the pensioner and designated survivor die.

Whatever.
 
We had to go to Boston in the 1970s and bug out of the hospital before they could tag us with the bill.

I've seen some of the U.S. bills.

Now you could just go to Toronto. Sometimes we expect too much

Park for free at Allandale. Tap your Presto. Direct rail trip into Union. No transfers. No bus. No worry about weather, traffic or parking. Trains run every 15 - 30 minutes. Cost $7.00
 
We had to go to Boston in the 1970s and bug out of the hospital before they could tag us with the bill. Now you could just go to Toronto. Sometimes we expect too much
My wife and I were super lucky. We moved here in late 2016, and were able to register with a family doc about a year and a half out of med school- so similar in age to us (i.e., not retiring soon) and she’s really great to deal with. I still don’t know how we rolled the 20 on that one and caught a vacancy.
 
Canada now has one of the highest capital tax rates in the world, are they trying to destroy economic growth? Who applauds this shit?
 
Did we have record capital flight from Canada with a lowered capital tax rate?
 
Canada now has one of the highest capital tax rates in the world, are they trying to destroy economic growth? Who applauds this shit?

Do we have this now or is that contingent on the proposed tax measures in the budget being passed and enacted?
 
Do we have this now or is that contingent on the proposed tax measures in the budget being passed and enacted?
I think it’s a bit more complicated that simple rate comparisons. I think it also depends on each tax system and what is taxed as capital gains. I think some countries might have a lower rate but will actually tax their primary residence if it sells over a certain amount for example.
 
I think it’s a bit more complicated that simple rate comparisons. I think it also depends on each tax system and what is taxed as capital gains. I think some countries might have a lower rate but will actually tax their primary residence if it sells over a certain amount for example.
It’s complicated. There’s no apples to apples comparison. Some countries don’t tax CG, some include it full in personal income, some tax CG at their own specific rate, some have partial inclusion… A case study would be necessary for the particular capital gain and the particular taxpayer to be able to make meaningful comparison.


A major flaw with @QV ’s statement is that we don’t actually have a ‘capital tax rate’. We do ours on a percentage inclusion basis, which doesn’t seem super common as an approach. Many jurisdictions seem to have a flat CG rate or just include (or exclude) them entirely in calculating taxable income. It gets further complicated still when you look at things like principle residence versus CG in investment securities, and then there are things like lifetime exclusions up to a cap for small businesses, and so on.

Taxation is not particularly easy to directly compare once you start getting into anything at all complex.
 
Every taxation discussion eventually becomes a Monty Python discussion.

"All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?"
 
Park for free at Allandale. Tap your Presto. Direct rail trip into Union. No transfers. No bus. No worry about weather, traffic or parking. Trains run every 15 - 30 minutes. Cost $7.00
Quibble: On the half hour during rush hour only; hourly otherwise (week days). $14.14 on Presto.
 
Every taxation discussion eventually becomes a Monty Python discussion.

"All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?"
As I sit here doing my taxes, some Monty Python would be great.
 
Quibble: On the half hour during rush hour only; hourly otherwise (week days). $14.14 on Presto.

Train departures Allandale to Union @ 0646 and 0701 each weekday.

Train departures Union to Allandale @ 1708 and 1723 each weekday.


Total PRESTO Fare1 Senior $7.08

Total PRESTO Fare1 Adult $13.29

 
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