Yikes

[Neox]

I do my own taxes every year, and this year I spent about an hour going through my paperwork to find out I owe the government $839.  :-X  I double, triple, and quadruple-checked it; my mum came over and checked it again for me, and it stands.  It's not a super-huge, unmanageable amount of money for me, but it's still highly undesirable and I'm trying to see what I should do to prevent it from happening next year.

I talked with my folks, and they're both saying I should create another RRSP account with a different bank (I currently bank with VanCity) and take enough off my paychecks to make my balance as close to $0 as I can get by the time 2011 taxes roll around.  No way in hell I want to pay more taxes, so I don't want to simply ask Nestle to take more tax off each cheque if I don't have to.

Just interested if there's anyone here with any better advice on the matter.  I have no problem opening up another RRSP (that'll be THREE RRSPs I'm currently managing), but if anyone has any better ideas, I'd like to hear them. =)

[Purplexity]

Just have them take off the extra tax.

One way or the other you will have to pay it eventually.

[Duffy]

yea the only way to go would be have them take an extra % or 2, rrsp's only go so far as a deduction. You could donate to charities as well, there's tax free savings accounts.  I let U-file do my taxes this year, and got back 1300$  \o/  ^^ it only cost 17 dollars and its so fast (i'm really lazy when it comes to taxes  :P )

[Unition]

I used to be all about rrsps, and reccomended them to everyone.  Now I'm all about tfsas, why? With tfsas you are deferring tax to a later date when you withdraw. However right now we are at all time lows for interest rates, odds are high it will be up later in life.  With tfsas you are taxed right now at our low rates and can invest from within the tfsas, and the government can't touch your profits.  If you make 10k for instance, normally you would have to pay ~25% or 2500 but in a tfsa they can't touch your money.