Should you consider getting life insurance before the rules change on Jan 1 2017?

Life insurance is commonly thought of as a simple estate planning tool. Yet it can also make a very powerful investment tool due to its favourable tax treatment.

Deposits and cash growth in life insurance policies are generally tax-free within certain limits, as are death benefits, which makes life policies used as investments very valuable.

On January 1, 2017 the part of the Canadian Income Tax Act governing life insurance policies will be amended to more accurately reflect changes in mortality rates (people are now living longer). It will also place additional limits on life insurance deposit amounts considered tax exempt.

If you decide to take advantage of life insurance for investment purposes and estate planning before these tax changes take place, your life policies will be grandfathered and provide you with the ability to invest more money tax-free than life policies purchased in 2017 and beyond.

There are many situations whereby you should consider investing in life policies before December 31, 2016. A couple of key situations include:

•  Your business is growing. Insurance taken out on the owners can create or strengthen succession plans to insure the business won't suffer when key people are unable to continue working for any reason.
•  You own properties whose value has grown beyond the capacity of your estate to cover estate tax obligations. It's possible that capital gains taxes will not allow you to have your estate assets distributed in the way that you’d like. Life insurance can be purchased to cover big tax hits such as these, and allow you to leave more to loved ones and charities.  

If you've already set aside specific funds to go to beneficiaries such as your spouse, grandkids, kids, community causes and charities, Bequest Insurance’s Generosity Multiplier™ can mobilize those funds to guarantee that your beneficiaries receive even more than you hoped, at no additional cost to you.

Rates of return on our Generosity Multiplier™ are based on age, and since none of us are getting any younger and tax changes are coming on January 1st, this could be the perfect time to contact Bequest Insurance to learn more about how you can reduce your taxes and leave more to meet your personal or business needs!

Do you have charitable gifts in your Will?

Do you have charitable gifts in your Will?

The great things that you wish to accomplish with charitable gifts in your Will may be affected by changes to Canadian tax rules in Bill C-43 that come into effect January 1, 2016.


The new rules are generally more advantageous to gifts in Wills than the existing framework. They allow executors to allocate charitable tax credits to the donor’s final tax return, the previous year’s return, and/or any of the first three years of estate returns. Also, charitable gifts will also be valued on the day the gift is received by the charity. This is a major change – previously, the gift was receipted based on its fair market value on the donor’s the date of death.

You should also know that the first three years of an estate are now called a Graduated Rate Estate, or GRE. This means that income taxes paid by an estate in it’s first three years are based on a graduated scale. After three years estate income is taxed at the highest marginal income tax rate.

Your estate may be impacted if your charitable gifts are distributed after the three year GRE period. If this happens, the charitable tax receipt can only be applied against that year’s estate tax return, and can’t be allocated retroactively to the tax returns of the deceased or any of the years of the GRE’s existence.

If you want to donate appreciated assets to charities, the capital gains tax exemption for gifted property will no longer be available to the estate after the three year GRE period. This may result in smaller settlements to all beneficiaries due to unintended additional income taxes owing by the estate.

In many circumstances, the new GRE will be a non-issue. However, it may become expensive if your estate is complex and takes more than three years to settle, since your estate can lose the advantages of the GRE. For example, this may happen when charitable gifts are delayed until your spouse dies, or where other entities are involved such as corporations or family businesses that may need more time to be settled or restructured. The possibility of challenges to the Will may be another concern.

In fact, anything that may delay an estate from winding up before the 3 year GRE period expires may become an unintended and expensive situation for an estate that expects to use charitable donation tax credits and other tax-friendly strategies available only to the GRE. If your valuable charitable tax credits are forced to go unused, this will almost certainly throw a wrench into your best-laid estate plans.

If nothing else, Bill C-43 is a compelling reason to get proper legal and financial advice on your circumstances today to determine whether any changes should be made to your Will and to your current investments strategies to ensure that all of your legacy intentions will be met tomorrow.