Your RRSP contribution $60,000 · Your marginal rate 33.3%
The refund is the reason the manoeuvre exists. It is real cash, this year, at your marginal rate — and it is the only part of this that arrives quickly.
That is the most anyone’s room can grow in a year, not the room you have. Your own limit is on your latest Notice of Assessment — contribute above it and you are penalised every month until the excess comes back out.
3. Wait 89 days
Order matters, and one of these steps has no exception. Doing them out of sequence does not delay the benefit; it removes it.
1. Contribute
Put money into an RRSP. Any RRSP room you have works — this does not need to be a special account.
2. Deduct
Claim the contribution as a deduction on your tax return. This is where the refund comes from.
3. Wait 89 days
A contribution made in the 89 days before your HBP withdrawal may not be deductible. Only the deduction is at risk — the withdrawal itself is never blocked.
CRA's own wording is "may not be able to deduct part or all" of that contribution — not an absolute rule with no exception, and not a rule on the withdrawal at all. What you risk by contributing inside the window is the refund, never the money.
4. Withdraw
Withdraw up to $60,000 tax-free under the Home Buyers’ Plan, using Form T1036.
5. Repay
Starting the second year after the withdrawal, repay an equal share of it each year for 15 years. Skip a payment and that amount is added to your income for the year.
89 days. Not approximately 89 days.
$4,000 per year for 15 years
The withdrawal is not a gift. One fifteenth of it goes back each year for fifteen years, starting the second year after you take it.
Repayment starts in year 2, not immediately.
A first withdrawal made between 2022 and the end of 2025 gets three more years before repayment starts. If that is you, the schedule below starts later than it shows.
Added to your income for each year missed $4,000 · Your marginal rate 33.3%
This is the part worth deciding on. A missed repayment year is added to your income and taxed, permanently — there is no way to put it back.
Whether the refund is worth fifteen years of obligation depends on facts this page is not given — your job security, your other savings, what else that money would have done. The three figures are here; the decision is yours.
Why the refund is smaller than the rate suggests
The refund is the tax on the band of income the contribution removes — not your top rate applied to the whole amount, which is the arithmetic that overstates it.
- Income before the deduction
- $75,000
- − RRSP contribution
- $60,000
- = Income after it
- $15,000
- Tax on that band
- $16,486
- The refund is the reason the manoeuvre exists. It is real cash, this year, at your marginal rate — and it is the only part of this that arrives quickly.
- Amount withdrawn tax-free
- $60,000
- ÷ Years to repay over
- 15
- = Repayable each year
- $4,000
Every figure that carries a sourcing record names where it came from: a dated published source, an estimate we disclose, or nothing at all where nothing is published.
Rules last verified 2026-08-24