# Boy did I screw up my wife's Spousal RRSP



## janus10 (Nov 7, 2013)

It is very hard to find blogs and websites acknowledging that you AND your spouse can contribute to a spousal RRSP. They all talk from the perspective of you alone contributing and your spouse withdrawing.

Here is where I screwed up. I'm retired but my wife is still working. Her main RRSP is a spousal RRSP. I stopped contributions years ago.

But, she made her last contribution this month.

I misunderstood that as long as I stopped contributions then when she withdraws it will be taxed in her hands. I just learned that she also had to have stopped contributions.

That seems a stupid rule to be honest and I'm not surprised I was confused because of the way spousal RRSPs are talked about in the blogosphere.

Don't screw it up like I did... And bloggers, here is your chance to set things straight by being loud and clear.

I guess there is no way for us to back out her contribution this year, right?


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## humble_pie (Jun 7, 2009)

janus10 said:


> It is very hard to find blogs and websites acknowledging that you AND your spouse can contribute to a spousal RRSP. They all talk from the perspective of you alone contributing and your spouse withdrawing.
> 
> Here is where I screwed up. I'm retired but my wife is still working. Her main RRSP is a spousal RRSP. I stopped contributions years ago.
> 
> ...




i believe there could be a way to reverse the 2017 contribution as it was made so recently.

go to the broker. She simply made an honest mistake, could they please reverse her contribution?

i did this once & the request succeeded. My assumption was that brokers don't report each & every little RRSP event to the CRA as it happens. Rather, they aggregate a bunch of transactions & forward these in bunches, at intervals. Remember, you won't receive an official tax slip for that february/17 contribution until 2018. For all i know, a broker might report once & once only to the CRA, after 31 december each year, forwarding an entire year's worth of RRSP contributions & withdrawals by all of its clients in one gigabatch.

in reality, i have no idea what their reporting intervals might be, but i suspect your wife's recent contribution is still 100% within the house, which means that the broker could reverse it quite easily. My own request worked out perfectly. The broker promptly reversed the contribution, no problem .

wishing you the best of luck.


.


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## OptsyEagle (Nov 29, 2009)

You messed up in 2 ways if she contributed to a spousal in her name. Not only does it prevent her from the withdrawals over the next 3 years or the taxable income gets attributed to you, but it also puts the RRSP tax receipt in your name for you to deduct. I am not sure if you wanted that 2nd part or not but I thought I would point that out. A financial institution does not always track where the money came from...it really only knows where it went.

Some institutions will change it if you act quickly. She would need to set up a personal RRSP to get the deduction in her name and allow her to make withdrawals at any time and receive the tax consequences in her name.


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## naysmitj (Sep 16, 2014)

I tripped on this a couple years ago.
Now have 3 RRSP'
My personal
My wife's personal.
My wife's spousal.


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## janus10 (Nov 7, 2013)

Thanks for the feedback. My wife called and they were able to back out this year's contributions so now the earliest she can withdraw without being taxed in my hands is 2019.

I guess it's a blessing in disguise that iTrade made the error in putting my name as the contributor for her last monthly contribution. I wouldn't have realized my mistake otherwise.

She has a very small work RRSP so we will need to fund her retirement initially through our margin account to minimize taxes (unless we have such phenomenal capital gains the point is moot).


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