TFSA contribution room calculator

No, and that is the main thing separating it from an RRSP. There is no first-60-days window and no December 31 cut-off to race: room you do not use rolls forward indefinitely and is still waiting years later. The only date that matters is January 1, when the new annual limit is added and any withdrawals you made last year come back.

It has not been announced. The CRA sets each year's limit by indexing to inflation and rounding to the nearest $500, then publishes it in late November, so the 2027 figure will be either $7,000 again or $7,500, depending on whether indexation clears the rounding threshold. Anyone quoting you a firm number for 2027 today is guessing. Contributing against an unannounced limit is how people end up owing 1% a month on an excess, so wait for the confirmed figure in January.

Someone who was 18 or older in 2009 and has been a Canadian resident throughout has $109,000 of cumulative room as of 2026, which is simply every annual limit since 2009 added together. It is lower if you turned 18 later or arrived in Canada later, because room only starts accruing from that year onward. There is no separate lifetime cap.

On January 1 of the following year, not straight away. Take out $5,000 in March and put it back in June of the same year and the $5,000 going back in counts as a brand new contribution against your existing room. If you had none left, you have now over-contributed and owe 1% per month on the excess. This is the rule that costs people the most money.

No. Room accrues every year from the later of 2009 and the year you turned 18, whether or not you have ever opened a TFSA. Unused room carries forward forever, so someone who has never contributed still has every dollar of it waiting.

No. Your room is per person, not per account. Splitting savings across three institutions does not create any more of it, it only makes your own total harder to keep track of.

The number in CRA My Account is only current to the last return they processed, so it usually lags your recent contributions. That is exactly why a calculator is useful, and also why you should treat both numbers as estimates until your next assessment.

The limit is indexed to inflation and rounded to the nearest $500, which is why it holds steady for years at a time. 2015 is the one exception: it was raised to $10,000 for a single year and rolled back to $5,500 in 2016.

Investments, and the name is the single most expensive piece of branding in Canadian finance. A TFSA is a tax shelter you wrap around almost anything: stocks, ETFs, mutual funds, GICs, bonds. Millions of people have theirs sitting in a savings account paying a couple of percent because the word "savings" told them that was the point, which wastes the shelter entirely, since there is barely any tax to shelter on that interest in the first place.

Yes, 15% is withheld before the dividend reaches you, and in a TFSA you cannot get it back. The Canada-US treaty exempts retirement accounts and a TFSA does not qualify, so unlike a taxable account there is no foreign tax credit to reclaim it with. An RRSP is exempt for US-listed stocks and ETFs. This only affects US dividends, not capital gains, and not Canadian holdings, so it is a reason to prefer an RRSP for US dividend payers rather than a reason to avoid them.

You can keep the account and it keeps growing tax-free as far as Canada is concerned, but no new room accrues for any full year you are a non-resident, and anything you contribute while non-resident is charged 1% per month until you take it out. Your existing room stays waiting for you if you return. Note that the country you move to may not recognise the shelter at all, which is what usually makes it worth advice rather than a rule of thumb.

Yes, and it is one of the few places the attribution rules leave alone. Normally giving your spouse money to invest means the income gets taxed back in your hands, but income earned inside their TFSA is not attributed to you. A couple who can only fill one set of contributions is usually better off filling both TFSAs than one. It is their room and their account though, so the money is legally theirs.

No. Contributions are not deductible and withdrawals are not income, so nothing about a TFSA appears on your return. Your financial institution reports your contributions and withdrawals to the CRA directly, which is how the figure in CRA My Account gets built, and also why it lags: it is only as current as the last set of filings they processed.