Quote:
Originally Posted by Red Ice Player
I neglected retirement planning almost to the last minute. I have some RSP savings but certainly not enough. My TFSA gets maxed every year and is doing reasonably well. Due to the previously mentioned neglect and disinterest I have a lot of accumulated RSP room. My plan is to leave my job at mid year, having turned 65 the previous year. At tax time, I will make an RSP contribution large enough to bring my total income for the year of my retirement to zero. This would qualify me for a monthly max GIS payment tacked on to my OAS, a strategy I can continue until I use up all my RSP room. My question is, would I also qualify for retroactive GIS for my entire retirement year? Technically, I'll be a destitute senior for that year so I would think so.
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I don’t want to give advice online, because it’s obvious that I don’t know the full situation here. But a couple things in general:
A) you could get retroactive payments from Service Canada because they do this when they pay things like CPP/OAS depending on the exact situation. I’m not completely sure about GIS though.
B) I’d really think about the plan of taking your income to zero for a few reasons. First, it sounds like you’re about to make a bunch of non-taxable or already taxed money, taxable. While that might get you some GIS, you want to make sure that makes sense (assuming you can get the GIS this way).
B1/2) ETA: you might not need to take your income right down to zero in this plan. You get the basic personal amount and things like that, so those RRSP contributions are almost a moot point. You could be best to set those funds aside and stagger the contributions through the next few years. I’m not saying that’s what you should do for sure, but you’d need to do the math and see what comes out the most favourable.
I know some people here are going to get irritated with my saying this for the second time in a few days…but there are professionals who do this kind of thing for a living, and we can handle these kinds of scenarios. You should probably consider some professional advice.