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Track your TFSA with Sharesight

by Stephanie Stefanovic, Content Manager, Sharesight | Nov 18th 2021

Canadian investors can automatically track their tax-free savings account (TFSA) in a Sharesight portfolio, inclusive of cash deposits and withdrawals as well as income from investments in stocks, ETFs and mutual funds. This makes it easy to track the performance of all your investments in one place, while taking advantage of Sharesight’s award-winning performance, dividend tracking and tax reporting. To learn more about TFSAs and how you can track them in Sharesight, keep reading.

Track your TFSA with Sharesight

What is a TFSA?

Introduced in Canada in 2009, a tax-free savings account (TFSA) is an account in which individuals who are 18 or over with a valid social insurance number can put aside money tax-free. Money deposited as well as income earned in the account (such as interest, dividends and capital gains) is non-taxable and can be withdrawn tax-free. While a TFSA is a form of savings account, it can also hold certain investments including mutual funds, shares and bonds.

How to track your TFSA in Sharesight

To track a TFSA in Sharesight, Canadian investors can simply set the tax entity of their portfolio to ‘TFSA’. This can be done by accessing the Settings menu and clicking ‘Tax settings’. By setting a Sharesight portfolio to ‘TFSA’, this means that all Canadian payouts will be considered non-taxable by default (which can be overridden if necessary), however non-resident withholding tax will still apply.

As can be seen in the screenshot below, a TFSA can be tracked in Sharesight just like any other portfolio type, with the ability to automatically track capital gains and dividends from investments, plus see the value of any deposits or withdrawals by tracking a cash account. Investors can also benchmark their TFSA against any one of the 240,000 global stocks, ETFs and funds that Sharesight tracks, which is a good way of understanding the TFSA’s performance in a broader market context.

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An example of a Canadian TFSA being tracked in Sharesight.

Tax entities available for Canadian portfolios

Tax Entity Type Notes
Non-registered Standard tax rules apply.
Registered Retirement Savings Plan (RRSP) Non-resident withholding tax does not apply for US stocks.
Registered Retirement Income Fund (RRIF) Non-resident withholding tax does not apply for US stocks.
Tax-Free Savings Account (TFSA) Income from Canadian investments will be treated as non-taxable by default and not appear on the Taxable Income Report. Non-resident withholding tax still applies.

Track your investment performance across all of your accounts

With Sharesight, not only can Canadian investors track the performance of all their TFSA investments, but they can also track the performance of all their different accounts in one place. This is made easy with Sharesight’s Consolidated Views feature, which allows investors to see performance across all their portfolios in a single view, including when running reports. For example, a Consolidated View could be useful for investors running the Performance, Diversity or Contribution Analysis reports, as it allows investors to view the asset allocation and top-performing investments across all their portfolios at a glance.

Start tracking your TFSA with Sharesight

If you’re not already using Sharesight to track your TFSA along with the rest of your investments, what are you waiting for? It’s free to sign up, and with Sharesight you can:

Sign up for a FREE Sharesight account and get started tracking your investment performance (and tax) today.

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Disclaimer: The above article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute a specific product recommendation, or taxation or financial advice and should not be relied upon as such. While we use reasonable endeavours to keep the information up-to-date, we make no representation that any information is accurate or up-to-date. If you choose to make use of the content in this article, you do so at your own risk. To the extent permitted by law, we do not assume any responsibility or liability arising from or connected with your use or reliance on the content on our site. Please check with your adviser or accountant to obtain the correct advice for your situation.

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