Time is Running Out for First-Time Home Buyers to Save in 2024

Owning a home, once almost considered a right of Canadian citizenship, has become a more distant dream for millions. The high cost of housing, coupled with a desperate shortage of supply, has turned the notion of home ownership into a near impossibility for many Canadians and those who have arrived in our country more recently.  The Tax-Free First Home Savings Account (FHSA) can help but it’s important to open an account before December 31, 2024 to create and preserve the contribution room.

Don’t miss this opportunity to save on critical professional tax education launching this month – pre-publication specials end March 15! Register now and start anytime in the next two months.

Do you have the skills to provide the process and structure your clients will need to effectively plan for their retirement? Differentiate yourself, attract new clients and increase profits by providing a high value service as a trusted advisor to your clients as a DMA™- Retirement Income Services Specialist.Take ten minutes and check out the Introduction to the DMA™- Retirement Income Services Specialist Program Orientation. Your experience includes an Orientation video, free course and calculator trials, and a special program offer that ends on March 15! Check out the details here:

In this final month of the first quarter of 2024, significant new tax filing milestones arise, but with a twist, because both March 30 and 31 are on a weekend and April 1 is a Monday.  For these reasons it’s important for tax and financial specialists to step up the tax filing conversation on critical issues like any potential RRSP excess contributions and everything related to trusts!  Here are the significant dates to know for March and April:

It’s Provincial Budget Time! First out of the gate on February 22, the BC government introduced a substantive budget which introduces a BC Family Benefit Bonus, increases the Climate Action Tax Credit, extends training tax credits, exempts farmers from participating in provincial agricultural insurance programs and most important, changes the taxation of real estate in the province, and introduces a new Home Flipping for 2025.  This is a substantive matter to discuss with clients during tax season 2024. Details follow:

February 29 was the date that compelled three provinces to release their 2024 provincial budgets:  Nunavut, Alberta and Nova Scotia.  Here are the tax highlights:

The Parliamentary Budget Officer released its projections and summary of Canada’s fiscal outlook on March 7, noting  “while total budgetary authorities are increasing in this year's Main Estimates, the pace of growth in the 2024-25 Main Estimates has slowed compared to the pandemic years” and that  “. . .  for the first time since the pandemic, voted budgetary authorities have decreased compared to previous years’ Main Estimate.”  The fly in the ointment is that those authorities still remain “roughly 50 per cent higher than in the pre-pandemic 2019-20 Main Estimates” and do not include new spending to be announced in the April 16 budget.  The PBO fiscal outlook follows: