Need Answers to Tax Question?  Expand Your Toolkit

No time to wait for hours on hold with the CRA?  Expand your tax season toolkit with Knowledge Bureau’s suite of immediately implementable tools including EverGreen Explanatory Notes and the Knowledge Bureau Tax Planning Calculators.  These tools are designed to provide you with answers to trigger questions your clients have about tax efficiency and the important financial decisions they need to make.

EverGreen Explanatory Notes is your comprehensive Tax Reference Library, which links to the Income Tax Act, and CRA’s forms and publications instantly – no wasted internet search time.  Plus you’ll find case studies and recent jurisprudence too.  It’s a fantastic resource you can use immediately as you sit in front of clients or staff brimming with tough tax questions.  Only  $65 a month when you select a 3-month subscription.  Subscribe Now!

The Knowledge Bureau’s Tax Planning Calculators follow the four elements of Real Wealth Management™: Accumulation, Growth, Preservation, and Transition—but can also be used to fill random knowledge gaps. Used in order, they will support consistent client interview processes throughout the year.  Most important – you can do quick and easy “what if” solutions featuring 2022 figures. 

Subscribe now! Get your single-user license for 1-month for $69.50 or 1-year for $795.

Calculators for Accumulation:

• Financial Assessment Calculator - A powerful calculator that links your client’s trigger questions about life, financial, and economic events to the changes required to get the best financial results now and in the future.

• Income Tax Estimator - A straight-forward calculator that helps to determine total taxes paid for individuals and/or couples based on different combinations of income sources. It is also a critical tool for every advisor who wants to show clients the benefits of an RRSP contribution, the effect of dividends on net income, how to pension income split, and how to structure income to avoid a clawback of Old Age Security or other income-tested government benefits like the Child Tax Benefit for families.

Calculators for Growth:

·       Take Home Pay Calculator - One key issue for employees considering a new job is their take-home pay, especially if the job is in a different province. This calculator provides an estimate of the take-home pay based on salary, exemptions, deductions and province of residence.

·       RRSP Savings Calculator - The first section of this calculator gives you a quick answer to how much tax savings are available by making an RRSP contribution. The second section determines the costs of a proposed RRSP loan and compares the loan costs to the earnings within the RRSP during the loan repayment period

·       Registered vs non-Registered Calculator - This calculator shows you how making the right choice—registered or non-registered account—makes all the difference in building wealth on time for your client’s retirement schedule.

·       Investment Income Calculator - This calculator helps you project investment income into the future, based on a four-year forecast. Use this calculator to put in detailed figures of all the different types of investment income the client may have in the future, based on their current savings pattern. This planner quickly determines the tax impact on investment income and helps you reconfigure solutions when alternative saving strategies are required. Then match new product selects to the outcomes required.

Calculators for Preservation:

·       Tax Efficient Asset Transfers - The average retirement is 20 years and this calculator lets you look at the duration, financially speaking, after tax. It helps layer income over a period of years to determine what tax brackets your clients will be in, how income sources affect net and taxable income, and what is left, after tax, if anything.

·       Marginal Tax Rate Calculator - Use this tool to quickly determine the average tax rate, marginal tax rate and tax bracket your client is in today, based on their income levels. This will help to determine your client’s current tax picture so that you can structure future income sources with tax efficiency.

·       Fixed vs. Variable Income Calculator - Planning for consistent, reliable income is the best way to protect capital in retirement, but this is more difficult when the retirement period coincides with a period of low or negative returns in the marketplace. Retirement income planning seeks to optimize fixed and variable income sources, but when the client relies on sources that fluctuate in value or in producing income, retirement income is unpredictable, causing the client stress.

·       CPP Income Calculator - Should your client draw from the CPP early? This calculator helps you answer that question by determining break-even points along the way while explaining the rule and criteria changes that take place in current and subsequent years.

·       Debt Reduction Calculator - This calculator assists in determining the amount of income available to service debt and then provides opportunities to calculate maximum mortgage payments, fixed-term mortgages, and all-in-one solutions.

·       Cash Flow Calculator - Cash flow and income are two different things, but your client may only see it as how much do they have to spend each month. The difference is the real money they get to keep after taxes. Calculate all the income sources—taxable, non- taxable, a return of capital, and windfall—to better understand where the money comes from for different purposes.

Calculators for Transition:

·       Tax Efficient Retirement Income Calculator - The average retirement is 20 years. Take a look at what that looks like, financially speaking, after tax, for both you and your spouse, retiring at different times.

·       Donation Savings Calculator - Canadians are becoming more philanthropic—giving more every year to causes that are important to them. This calculator helps in determining the tax savings, and therefore the after-tax cost, of charitable donations.

·       Trust Tax Estimator Calculator - In order to plan for succession using testamentary trusts, you’ll need to know how much tax will be payable by the trust. Use this calculator to estimate the taxes on income earned in trust either as a graduated rate estate or a regular trust.