Termination And Bank Transfer Fees For Your TFSA Account

There is an important point about choosing the bank that you are most comfortable with in opening your new tax free savings account which I heard about today. Generally speaking, like most people I am looking for a bank that will provide the best interest rate and other factors to make sure that I am getting the best return.

As a result, like most people I am susceptible to those flashy ads that some banks are using which indicate that they are offering a very high interest rate. However, it is important to keep in mind that in the fine print most of the banks say that its rates can change at anytime. Example, you could have signed up with a rate that looked like the highest of all the banks only to see it drop in the near future.

Then, you might be thinking that it is better to transfer your money to a different bank. While reading some banking fees though, such as for TD Waterhouse’s TFSA plan, they have an insanely high “$125 for a termination/transfer fee”. Essentially, you could almost be making nothing if you decided to transfer as a result of that fee.

Because of this, it is very important to make sure that the bank you are going to sign up with doesn’t have a history of dropping rates once they feel that they have acquired enough accounts. Don’t just rely on what interest rate they are wiling to offer you now.

TFSA Excess Contribution Interest Penalty

One point I was just reading about the tax free savings account coming here in Canada is the possibility of getting penalized if you place too much funds into your account. Essentially, if your limit is $5000 annually contributing $5001 into a TSFA account will mean that $1 will be subject to an interest penalty.

While most banks don’t seem to list the penalty amount that you would have to pay, from the literatures that I have read the interest penalty is 1%. It’s very similar to RRSP’s I guess if you wan to look at it that way. Although, thinking about this I don’t see why a bank can’t just restrict you automatically to make life easier.

The only real way that this might get confusing for people that I can see is how many of the banks will be offering monthly interest calculations to pay TFSA account holders. Therefore, this might confuse some people if they don’t actually keep track of how much they put in but rather just rely on looking at how much is in the account on a monthly basis.