Splitting income with RRSP and/or RRIF is really a required option for optimized tax planning, as creating two pensions out of one does a poor job of annual tax requirements. Thanks

+1 Pension splitting (Canada age 65+) can make a huge difference to income tax liability in cases where spouses have materially unequal size of defined contribution pension assets. https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/individuals/topics/pension-income-splitting.html

As I use PL another feature which would make sense to be added to income splitting is the ability to use the younger spouses’ age when calculating RMD’s. For example my wife is 4 years younger and I use her age for RRIF withdrawals which reduces the mandatory percentage. “https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/individuals/topics/registered-retirement-income-fund-rrif/receiving-income-a-rrif.html”

Currently as far as I can see, RRSP/RRIF withdrawals are not shown by spouse, but shown lumped together. I would like to know the break down so I know how much to withdraw from mine and how much from my wife, unless there is some other way to do this that I have not discovered.

Here is my method as a workaround. Create 2 RRSP accounts one for him and one for her. When I update current balances I split the real world total of both accounts equally into the PL RRSPs. So this will simulate RRIF income splitting in our case pretty close to the CRA formula. For pre-RRIF years I set up a recurring transfer from each RRSP to each TFSA (there is a tutorial on how to do this). You could also add transfers to your Nonreg accounts if you wish. Works OK once you get it set up and then you can play with “de-reg” amounts and timing in different accounts to see tax and net worth projections. Let me know if you have any questions and id be pleased to help

Thanks for the replies. While PL is a great app with a great interface for US users, it is lacking in Canadian specific functionality. I realize it’s getting there with tax code and the ability to make things kinda work but needs more development in mho. Planeasy and their DIY solution adviice . ca is what I’m now looking at. I will keep my existing license of PL as well

Thanks for the suggestion. We both have an RRSP and TFSA, my RRSP is larger, but she has a pension. All our expenses are joint in the real world. The issue is PL does not provide a projection where the taxable income for both of us is close. I would expect it to take a small amount from her RRSP and a larger amount from mine, and also to take from TFSAs where it makes sense to bump down into a better tax bracket, and adjust when cpp and oas are added in. Instead, it takes a large amount from my RRSP and nothing from any other accounts. I started mucking around with splitting up expenses into multiple expenses where each is funded by some account. But at some point as this gets more granular, and breaking them down into go go, go slow, no go, and other sub phases, etc, I might as well just use my Excel spreadsheet. And, when it withdraws from RRSPs it does not show who’s RRSP in the Cash Flow. I figured out how to reverse engineer that with a custom plot, but it is a pain to run an export every time I make an adjustment. I’m looking at MoneyReady now, and Vince mentioned PlanEasy. Maybe I’ll cycle back to PL later.

Edit: not PlanEasy, actually Adviice

Hey Perri income splitting is coming to adviice soon along with the ability to use your wife’s age if she is younger. They also have an AI section which automates suggestions for your portfolio. The user interface is not as slick as PL but the functionality is quite good. They have lots of videos on how it works and supporting on reddit.