Retirement Calculators
Work out what you must withdraw, what you can afford to withdraw, and how long the money lasts. Built on the CRA’s own prescribed factors and checked against what the banks publish.
Drawing down a registered plan
RRIF Minimum Withdrawal
The minimum you must take this year, the CRA factor behind it, and a full schedule.
RRSP Withdrawal Tax
What a withdrawal really costs: withheld at source versus the tax you actually owe.
Retirement money has rules attached
Saving for retirement is mostly a matter of choice. Spending it is not. Once an RRSP becomes a RRIF, the government sets a minimum you have to withdraw every year, worked out from your age and the balance on 1 January, and that amount rises every year whether you need the money or not. Understanding the floor is the starting point for everything else.
What has to come out
The RRIF minimum withdrawal calculator gives you this year’s required amount and shows the factor it came from. It also prints the CRA’s prescribed factors in full — ages 55 to 70 from the 1 ÷ (90 − age) formula, and 71 onward from the prescribed chart — so you can look up any age directly rather than take our word for it.
What you can afford to take
The minimum is a floor, not a target. Switch the same calculator to a fixed payment, enter the income you actually want, and it shows how fast the balance falls and whether it lasts. Where a fixed payment would fall below the legal minimum, it pays the minimum instead and says so — you may always take more than the minimum, never less.
What it costs to take money out early
Before conversion, an RRSP withdrawal is taxed as ordinary income — but the amount your institution withholds at source is only a deposit against that, and the two are rarely the same. The RRSP withdrawal tax calculator shows both figures side by side, so you can see whether a withdrawal leaves you owing more in April or due a refund. It also shows why splitting a withdrawal into smaller pieces lowers the withholding without changing the bill.
Tax is a separate question
Every dollar that comes out of a RRIF is taxable income in the year you take it. Nothing is withheld on the minimum itself, but anything above it has tax held back at source, and that withholding is a prepayment rather than the final bill. To see what a withdrawal does to your total tax, pair these tools with the Canada income tax calculator.
These pages are general information, not financial or tax advice. See our disclaimer.