There is a limit on how much you can contribute to your RRSP!
Your annual RRSP contribution limit is reported on your Notice of Assessment or Notice of Reassessment. If you exceed your annual RRSP contribution limit, you are subject to a penalty tax of 1% per month of the amount of excess contributions to your own and your spouses’ RRSP’s.
Administratively, the CRA will not assess the penalty tax unless the over contribution is more than $2,000, which gives many Canadians a little bit of leeway if they make a mistake.
Also note that, if you have unused RRSP contributions on your Notice of Assessment and the amount of the unused RRSP contributions is greater than your RRSP deduction limit then you may be subject to the penalty tax.
The penalty tax on RRSP over contributions should be less than your average tax rate. Balance the impact of withdrawing the excess contributions over apply future year’s RRSP deduction limits to eliminate the over contribution.
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Tax Guy,
my limit for 2011 is 8,700 I’m planning to contribute another 2,300 before February ends to make it 11,000 plus I also have a monthly contribution of 200. Will my contributions from jan to february which is 400 be added to the 11,000? say my total contribution for 2011 is 11,400 by the end of feb… does that mean that I have an excess contribution of 700 dollars and i will have to pay 1% of the 700 dollars monthly as penalty? Will i still get a tax refund if i exceed?
thanks in advance
Rob
You can only deduct your limit plus carryforward from prior years.
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