Ill winds abound—the tax season begins to rear its ugly head, compounded with the looming spectre of a trade war. In vain protest of both, please accept this modest contribution of CanCon: some RRSP contribution math.

Editor's note: yes, I am aware we are well past the tax season at time of publication. But I've had this draft kicking around since February, and frankly there's no chance I'll remember to post it at the right time in 2026.

Usual disclaimer: I have no qualifications; emulate me at your own peril.

For simplicity below I'll assume we're considering tax year 2024.

Assumptions:

• You want to make the maximum contribution to your RRSP for 2024, and claim the deduction for that full amount.
• You're making payroll contributions to your RRSP, but those contributions leave you with some unused room.
• You want to make one final lump-sum payment to use up your remaining contribution room.

Process:

1. Log in to your CRA account and find your RRSP deduction limit for 2024.
2. For all financial institutions where you hold an RRSP, download your "RRSP contribution receipt" for the March–December 2024 period.
   • This year, my employer changed RRSP providers, so I had to grab those receipts from two institutions.
3. Manually calculate the payroll RRSP contributions you'll make for the January–February 2025 period.
   • You need to calculate this yourself, because by the time your financial institution issues your RRSP contribution receipt for the January–February 2025 period, it will be too late to make your lump-sum contribution for 2024. This shouldn't be too onerous—assuming your payroll contributions are consistent, multiply that contribution by the number of pay periods you have in January–February.
4. You can now calculate your remaining RRSP contribution room from the amounts above: it's (1), less (2), less (3). That's the amount that you should make as a single lump-sum contribution. Be sure to get it in before the end of the contribution year.
   • Remember that the penalty for excess contributions is steep, so you might want to err on the side of undershooting with the lump-sum contribution.
5. When filing your tax return, be sure to include the RRSP receipts you downloaded in (2) (as well as the January–February ones that became available later).

Until next time, may your unused deduction limit and excess contributions both be zero.