Frequently asked questions

For the 2026 tax year, the RRSP dollar limit is $32,490. Your personal RRSP room is the lower of 18% of your prior-year earned income and that dollar maximum, minus any pension adjustment (PA). Carry-forward room from earlier years adds on top. Check your CRA My Account for your exact current-year room.

The 2026 TFSA annual room is $7,000. Cumulative TFSA room since the program began in 2009 is $102,000 for anyone who was at least 18 in 2009 and has been a Canadian resident the entire time. Unused room carries forward indefinitely.

The RESP lifetime contribution limit is $50,000 per beneficiary. To maximize the Canada Education Savings Grant (CESG), contribute $2,500 per beneficiary per year — that triggers the 20% federal match of $500. Lifetime CESG per child is capped at $7,200.

The short answer: RRSP wins when your marginal tax rate today is higher than the rate you expect at withdrawal, TFSA wins when it's lower. The break-even is your expected retirement marginal rate. PlainRRSP encodes this decision tree so you can plug in your numbers; we plan to ship the full calculator in /calculator/ in the next build cycle.

Yes — Canada has both federal and provincial income-tax brackets, applied on top of each other to form your combined marginal rate. Federal brackets are uniform across the country; provincial brackets differ widely. Alberta's lowest bracket is 10%; Nova Scotia's top is 21%. Phase 1 ships Ontario brackets; the remaining 12 provinces and territories land in Phase 2.

No. The calculator runs entirely in your browser. We do not record, transmit, or persist any of the income, contribution, or province inputs you type in. We use privacy-friendly Umami analytics for pageviews only — no personal-data collection, no third-party trackers.

Contribution limits come directly from the Canada Revenue Agency registered-plans table. Provincial marginal-rate brackets come from each province's finance ministry (Ontario MoF, Quebec MRQ, Alberta TBF, etc.). Demographic and earnings reference points come from Statistics Canada. Every detail page links to its upstream source.

No. PlainRRSP is informational only and does not provide personalized tax, financial, or investment advice. The calculator reflects public CRA and provincial schedules; it does not account for your full situation (carry-forward room, pension adjustments, attribution rules, US-tax filing, etc.). For decisions with material money on the line, consult a CPA or a CFP licensed in your province.