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Show HN: Income/savings calculator for moving to Canada
- ebg13 6y agoThis doesn't seem very useful to me. It looks like it only estimates taxes for you and doesn't do any legwork on cost of living.
- senecaso 6y agoRight now it only provides some very basic cost of living, and things like RRSP contributions. I can probably enhance it by adding the COL data per region, but I would have to focus on a small selection of cities otherwise it would be too much work.
- richajak 6y agoIn addition to RRSP, you can reduce tax by contributing to TFSA. Just focus on Ontario and BC, these will be sufficient for most tech immigrants.
- II2II 6y agoIt is interesting from a Canadian perspective. My home province is often criticized for it's high taxes, yet it turns out that there is no variation for lower incomes and the additional tax burden is around 5.5% for higher incomes. The reality is the disparity in income has a much larger impact on quality of life than a few thousand dollars paid in taxes. (I assumed the low income person was working full time at minimum wage, and used the default $100,000 as a higher income. Quebec was ignored since people are less likely to move there unless they speak French or are employed in certain industries.)
- nogabebop23 6y agoYou've got EI contributions in there but not Canada Pension Plan - that's another ~$2,900 is source deductions per year It also looks like your accomodation is just randomly costed - there is huge varation in type/location and this is probably the single biggest expense.
- senecaso 6y agoOh, CPP! Thanks! I forgot about that. I'll add that in. I tried to comment on the rent cost. Its roughly the cost of a 2bdr place in the Vancouver area. I would like to expand it to show more cities, and it seems others would like that as well. I can look at adding specific expense data for a few cities (probably Vancouver, TO, and maybe Montreal)
- senecaso 6y agoAdded CPP. Thanks for pointing that out.
- CaveTech 6y agoIs this missing federal taxes? It's way off for higher income brackets (almost 100% off).
- senecaso 6y agoYikes. No, I have added the federal taxes to it, and it appears to be deducting it from the total income. Could you provide a little more data so I can track down the issue you are seeing?
- senecaso 6y agoI had a bug where was was deducting taxes from the total income, not the taxable income, which lead to numbers being off. This is now corrected, hopefully this is the issue you were seeing.
- paulhart 6y agoNeed to add CPP (Canada Pension Plan) contributions to the taxes. That's another $2898 deducted in 2020. Also, I threw $100k into the EY online tax calculator - https://www.eytaxcalculators.com/en/2020-personal-tax-calculator.html https://www.eytaxcalculators.com/en/2020-personal-tax-calcul... - and it claims you'd have $77,410 left after federal and provincial taxes in BC (getting into RRSP contributions etc just makes things complicated).
- senecaso 6y agoAdded CPP. Let me confirm my numbers against that tax calculator. I based this on the rates found in the "About" page, but its possible I screwed up the calculation.
- senecaso 6y agoI just compared my numbers to https://simpletax.ca/calculator https://simpletax.ca/calculator and they look pretty close. I checked the site you mentioned, and you're right, they are vastly different. I can't explain that with certainty, but perhaps its not deducting things like RRSP contributions which lowers the tax?
- rcfox 6y agoIf you're maxing your RRSP, you might as well also max your tax free savings account (TFSA) which is another $6000.
- senecaso 6y agothanks! I'll add that.
- glitchc 6y agoYour federal and provincial income taxes are way too low. If you click on the link below, you'll see BC has an average tax rate of 25.8% on 100K. https://neuvoo.ca/tax-calculator/Ontario-100000#:~:text=%2451.25%20an%20hour%20is%20how,marginal%20tax%20rate%20is%2043.41%25 https://neuvoo.ca/tax-calculator/Ontario-100000#:~:text=%245.... Taxes are killer in the Great White North.
- mmastrac 6y ago> Taxes are killer in the Great White North. Fortunately this pays for an extensive social security network including health care (though sadly not dental!)
- nerdponx 6y agoI'd be interested in total take-home pay when comparing Canadian taxes to US taxes + employer-sponsored healthcare coverage.
- senecaso 6y agoYa, I hear you there. That's actually why I built this, was to help calculate that, but there are so many variables in that calculation, I decided to start with I would just figure out what would be left of your paycheque each month and then users can compare against their US bank statements. Its rough, but hopefully its enough to give people considering making a move enough information to decide.
- jbay808 6y agoI think the difference in taxes are a very minor factor compared to the difference in pre-tax compensation in the US vs Canada.
- senecaso 6y agothey sure are! From the digging around I have done, you can expect a 40% cut from a Bay area salary to Vancouver. The question then becomes, what sort of standard of living could I expect to maintain after taking such a large cut, and that's what I was trying to surface with this calculator.
- downvoteme1 6y agoNot to underestimate OP’s effort but this calculator is much better and has more options https://simpletax.ca/calculator https://simpletax.ca/calculator
- senecaso 6y agoYa, I looked at that as well, but it doesn't include common expenses, which is why I built this one, to make it a little easier to get the overall picture
- tejohnso 6y agoNearly $5,000 /yr for medical, vision, dental seems quite high. Where is that default coming from?
- senecaso 6y agoit was a guess based on numbers I polled from someone I know, then I just multiplied it by 3, for a "family of 3" as indicated in the comments. If you are willing to provide a more accurate number, I'll include that.
- parliament32 6y agoThat's way too high. I pay $800/yr for basically 100% coverage in a group plan for me plus one.
- tejohnso 6y agoIf you're going by individual anecdotes, I can add mine. ~$200 for glasses in the last 5 years. Everything else covered by either basic government coverage or group employee insurance.
- tejohnso 6y agoIt would be nice if there were explainers beside the figures. Immediately upon looking at the default page we see a base salary of $100,000 gives taxable income of $69,015.64. How?
- senecaso 6y agobase salary - nontaxable expenses non taxable expenses = RRSP + CPP + EI (plus anything else you add to the list) I'll look at revising the instructions to make it more clear that the tables below directly impact the calculation. Would that help?
- senecaso 6y agoI think I can lay out the summary fields a bit differently to reflect how the calculation is being made, so its more obvious to the user whats going on. I'll see if I can do that later today. Thanks for the input.
- wittyreference 6y agoHandy. The thing it's missing, that was the big issue when I looked into relocating, is that my and my wife's jobs don't reimburse the same in Ca. That's the biggest impact, above and beyond everything else.
- joncp 6y ago> I know the UI is horrible. Don't worry, I have no intention of quitting my day job. Actually, this is a nice clean layout and workflow. Nothing to be ashamed of at all.
- senecaso 6y agothanks!
- alloai 6y agoFor first year, you can not take rrsp contributions. And starting the second year, rrsp contribution room is 18% of your previous year salary. for 100 000 salary, you can only contribute 18 000 (maximum is about 22000 something). Want to know if you have source code, I can help to contribute the calculations. I've accounting background studying react and python right now.
- senecaso 6y agoOh, nice, thanks! Its in a private repo right now, but I can probably make it public since there isnt anything I need to protect in there. I'm guessing most users going into tech would likely make at least $150k/yr, so they would be eligible to make the max contribution for the year. Good point about the 100k default base salary though. I didnt realize it was min(18% prev yrs salary, $27230.00), thats good to know, thanks!
- samayylmao 6y agowould you be able to retire on RRSP alone?
- senecaso 6y agoyou would retire on RRSP + CPP (very small) + whatever you currently have in your 401k + whatever you have in retirement savings from any other country(ies) you have lived in. That said, depending on your age, with a max RRSP contribution of 27k, if you can contribute the max for 20yrs, you should have enough to retire on RRSP alone, assuming reasonable retirement living. Assuming you contribute $27230/yr for 20yrs, and manage to get 5% growth on that account each year, you would end up with about $1m in the RRSP. It all depends on how much time you have to grow the account I guess.
- theluketaylor 6y agoOne thing to keep in mind is RRSP is a tax shelter at time of contribution. You avoid paying income tax now, but you still need to pay income tax on withdrawals during retirement. For pretty much everyone their "salary" will be lower in retirement since things like houses are paid off and expenses are just lower, so you'll pay a lower marginal rate overall (plus you get the income tax back so you have more capital to build from) Another thread pointed out it's a max contribution of 18% of last year's income (which is then limited to 27k), so you need to make around $150k CDN to make the max contribution. TFSA works the other way. It's a tax shelter for growth. You've already paid income tax on the capital, but don't pay any tax on gains you manage to make when you withdraw. If you withdraw below the contribution limit you can top it back off as well, so a TFSA is a good place to save things like house and car down payments (though it's even better if you have enough money to just leave it alone).
- uneekone 6y agoIt's more important for everyone who's are going to plan to move to Canada Without saving and income calculator it is very difficult
- tejohnso 6y agoNot a UI expert, but a dropdown beside the grey boxes that expands to show the actual calculations would be nice.