Tax shelters and retirement investing: a rule for RRSP profit

Article Excerpt

Before letting any investment rule for tax shelters play a role in your retirement investing decisions, make sure it makes sense for you in today’s market. For instance, one long-standing retirement investing rule for tax shelters says you should hold fixed-return investments, like bonds, in your RRSP and hold stocks outside your RRSP. Its rationale is two-fold. First, bonds are safer than stocks because they guarantee repayment of principal. Second, interest payments are fully taxed, just like salary. You save more tax by earning interest in your RRSP, rather than capital gains or dividends. This rule made some sense a decade or so ago. Bonds were more attractive then, since their yields were roughly double current levels. Today, in contrast, some stocks yield almost as much as bonds, if not more, without even counting the tax-cutting effect of the dividend tax credit. In fact, interest rates today are so low that it makes little sense to buy any long-term fixed-return investment. My view is that interest…