Save more and pay less tax every year
with a Personal Pension Plan.

A PPP® makes sense as soon as you draw a T4 salary of at least $60,000 from your incorporated business — and you can start as young as 19, with no age-40 hurdle.

Starting young is an advantage: every year of T4 salary builds contribution room, so the earlier you open the plan, the more tax-sheltered room compounds in your favour — and the corporate tax deduction on contributions, plus room up to ~67% higher than an RRSP by age 65, grows right alongside your income and your corporation's surplus profit. If your income is still below that $60K mark or your corporate cash flow is unpredictable, an RRSP is usually the better starting point.

A fair question, and the answer comes down to one number: $50,000. If your corporation earns more than that in passive investment income — which a growing corporate ETF portfolio will, eventually — the CRA grinds down your Small Business Deduction. Your active business income gets pushed from the low small-business rate to the higher general corporate rate.

A PPP® shelters the capital outside your corporation, so it doesn't count toward the $50K threshold. You also get a corporate-tax-deductible contribution going in (a corporate ETF buy isn't deductible), the same low-cost ETFs are still available inside the PPP® wrapper, and the plan fees are 100% deductible too.

No, you do not, however, you will need an employment relationship with a T4 income to qualify.

A Limited Partnership, General Partnership, Joint Partnership (example, law firm) or even a Sole Proprietor could offer a PPP to its employee (ie. wife, kid) if the employee is receiving T4 income. However, the partners themselves or the sole proprietor would not be eligible for a PPP. Why? because they cannot employ themselves and pay themselves T4 income.

Yes — your incorporated business or professional corporation sponsors the plan. It can be a one-person operation; you don't need staff or a payroll department.

The only structural requirement is that you draw T4 salary from it. The plan exists as a contract between the sponsoring corporation and the plan members; the trustees hold the assets on behalf of the members.

Not without restructuring how you pay yourself. The CRA only allows pension contribution room to be generated by earned income — specifically T4 salary. Dividends generate zero PPP® room.

If you've been on a dividend-only model, opening a PPP® means shifting at least partially to a salary model, which means paying both halves of CPP. The tradeoff: you pick up the CPP cost, but you unlock vastly higher tax-deductible pension contributions and you move capital off the corporate balance sheet (escaping the SBD passive-income grind). For high-income owners it almost always nets out positive — we'll model both for you before you commit.

Yes. You can convert the IPP into a PPP® and gain the advantages of having a PPP®. It is an easy process that involves filing an amendment with the regulators and completing a few documents. Click here to get started.

Both are built on the same CRA pension legislation — a PPP® is technically a registered IPP with extra features.

The key practical difference is flexibility. A pure IPP locks you into a single Defined Benefit funding model with strict mandatory contributions each year. The INTEGRIS PPP® lets you toggle between three modes in one registered plan:

• Defined Benefit — maximum contributions in profitable years
• Defined Contribution — relax the mandatory funding in lean years
• Additional Voluntary Contributions — top up personally, RRSP-style

If your corporate cash flow is predictable, a pure IPP works. If your business has revenue cycles, the PPP®'s toggling matters a lot.

TFSA

You can always contribute to your TFSA at all times, whether you have a PPP® or not.

RRSP

When you participate in a PPP®, this creates what we call 'Pension Adjustments' or PA. The following year, the PA eliminates a lot of the RRSP contribution room generated during the year that contributions we made to the PPP. You have to understand that RRSP contribution room in a given year is based on earned income from the previous year, as such there is a lag.

That said, some RRSP contributions are still permitted in spite of the PA. For example, in the first year, one can contribute to the PPP and to the RRSP. Why? because the PA will only impact RRSP room for the next year. in other words, in the year that the RRSP room was created, the PPP did not exist thus no PA.

So, what can be contributed to an RRSP when a PPP is in place? In the first year: an RRSP contribution using the room you accumulated before the plan was set up (up to the annual RRSP dollar limit for that year). In subsequent years: The RRSP contribution is capped at $600 because of the PA system.

Largely yes — and this surprises people, so let's be up front. When you set up a PPP®, you can "buy back" years of past T4 service (often as far back as 1991), and the corporation makes a large tax-deductible contribution to fund that buyback.

The catch: the CRA doesn't allow you to claim pension room and RRSP room for the same years. So part of the buyback is paid by a qualifying transfer from your existing RRSP into the PPP®. The funds stay sheltered — they move from one tax-deferred wrapper to another — and the corporation absorbs the rest as a deductible expense.

Net effect: you trade self-directed RRSP space for vastly more pension room. For high-income owners, almost always the right trade — but understand the mechanics before you sign.

The pension doesn't disappear. You have three exit paths:

1. Keep the plan and start drawing the pension — sale or wind-down of the operating company doesn't force you to collapse the plan; it can continue to pay you a lifetime monthly pension.
2. Transfer the value into a LIRA — collapse the plan and roll the commuted value into a Locked-In Retirement Account. The most common path when selling to a third party.
3. Purchase a life annuity — transfer the obligation to an insurance company that pays you a lifetime income.

One caveat on option 2: the CRA caps how much can be rolled into a LIRA tax-free (the "Maximum Transfer Value"). If the plan has done very well and exceeds that cap, the excess is taxed as income in the year of transfer. We help model the right exit path with your accountant well in advance of any sale.

Setup and ongoing administrative costs for a PPP® are 100% tax-deductible to the sponsoring corporation, which is a meaningful advantage over RRSP advisory fees (paid with after-tax dollars).

In our own testing, the plan starts to pay for itself at around a $60,000 T4 salary — at that level the corporate tax savings on the first year's contribution alone cover multiple years of plan fees, and the higher your income and contributions, the faster that payback compounds. You can model your numbers here or get in touch and we'll walk through it with you.

The first $2,000 of pension income received is eligible for the pension credit (reducing the taxes otherwise payable). Moreover, spouses can use the pension income splitting rules to allocate up to 50% of the pension income to a spouse who is not in receipt of a pension, thereby potentially moving the PPP® member's tax bracket to a lower bracket and reducing the couple's overall taxes in the process. When pension income splitting is used, the first $4,000 of pension income can be claimed as a 'pension amount' credit to further reduce individual taxes.

A PPP® has a meaningful estate-planning edge over an RRSP for family businesses. When both spouses have died, an RRSP balance is brought into the deceased's terminal tax return — often taxed at the top marginal rate (50%+).

A PPP® set up to include next-generation family members who are legitimately employed and drawing T4 from the sponsoring corporation continues as a pension trust on death — the assets stay in the plan to fund the children's eventual retirements, with no deemed disposition.

The pension trust also offers stronger creditor protection than personal investment accounts. It only works if family members are real T4 employees of the sponsoring corp, so it's not a fit for everyone — but it's a major lever for family-owned businesses.

An RCA (Retirement Compensation Arrangement) is for very high earners who've already maxed out RRSP + PPP® room and still have surplus corporate cash they'd like to defer.

The corporation contributes; 50% goes into the RCA investment account, and 50% goes to the CRA's Refundable Tax Account as a non-interest-bearing deposit. The CRA refunds $1 from the RTA for every $2 paid out to you in retirement. The whole structure is a tax-deferral arbitrage: deductible now at corporate rates, taxable later at (ideally) a lower personal rate in retirement.

The break-even usually requires $200K+ in corporate surplus per year on top of an already-maxed PPP®. Read more about RCAs →

Yes, the INTEGRIS PPP® is available in all provinces and territories of Canada

Yes, as long as you are getting a T4 from the organization.

Two reasons. First, retained earnings have already been taxed at the corporate rate before you can invest them. Second — and this is the big one — if your corporation earns more than $50,000 a year in passive investment income, the CRA grinds down your Small Business Deduction. Your active business income gets pushed off the low small-business rate and onto the higher general corporate rate.

PPP® contributions are deducted from corporate income before tax, and the capital is sheltered outside the corporation, so it doesn't add to the $50K passive-income count. That's the structural advantage.

There are 2 key instances where a PPP® would not be suitable for a prospect:

1. Individuals who will treat the account as a special kind of short-term savings account to be used towards an upcoming expenditure before retirement. While it is possible to withdraw some funds in a certain situation or even opt for early retirement -- treating the PPP® as a short-term savings account is not the best strategy.
2. Individuals who want to invest all of their money in a single security. If you think you've found the perfect stock and want to leverage all of the funds by concentrating on that stock, you will be prohibited from doing so in a PPP®. Like all pension plans, you cannot hold more than 10% of a single security within your PPP®.

For each member:

• Proof of age – copy of driver's license/passport that shows the name and date of birth
• Latest Notice of Assessment
• Latest RRSP statement for all RRSPs/LIRAs/LIFs/RRIFs etc.
• Document to verify the SIN Number - e.g. a T4 slip or a notice of assessment if the full SIN number is available.
• T4's for every year buying back past service (PLEASE NOTE THIS CAN TAKE UP TO 6 MONTHS – TIPS ON HOW BEST TO OBTAIN T4s BELOW)

For the company that is sponsoring the plan:

• Articles/Certificate of Incorporation for the company
• Document to verify the CRA Business Number of the company that is sponsoring the pension plan – e.g. the first page of a corporate tax return or the T4 slip that shows the employer number

Tips for obtaining T4s:

• Request from your corporate accountant
• Request through the CRA website
• Contact CRA by phone 1-800-959-8281
• Use CRA Form AUT-01 to request on your clients' behalf (can take 4-6 months)