Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Trading liquidity for certainty with an annuity

Great article in the Globe and Mail on the Insured Annuity concept.

Published on Thursday, Jan. 14, 2010 12:00AM EST
Globe and Mail


Tim Cestnick is managing director at WaterStreet Family Wealth Counsel and author of 101 Tax Secrets for Canadians. 
 
Perhaps you've heard the story of the elderly gentleman? The story, which varies a little depending on where you first heard it, goes like this: A reporter was sent to interview a man as he turned 100 and find out if there were a formula to his longevity. "Sir, do you have any secrets you can share that have allowed you to maintain such good health for so long?" "Well, I go to bed early, get up at six in the morning, eat lots of vegetables, I don't smoke or drink, and I go for a brisk walk every day," the man replied. "There must be more to it," said the reporter. "I had an uncle who lived the same way and he died at age 60. I'm not sure how to explain that." "That's easy," the man said. "He didn't keep it up long enough."

Everyone is searching for the secret to longevity. The question is: Will you run out of income before running out of retirement? Today, I want to share a retirement income idea that can provide an increase in your after-tax cash flow in retirement, preserve your capital, boost your returns after tax and other costs, and remove interest rate risk from your portfolio. I'm talking about an insured annuity.

The idea
The insured annuity concept involves doing two things: First, purchasing an annuity to provide you with cash flow in retirement, and purchasing life insurance at the same time. Why life insurance? Simple. When you carve out some capital to purchase the annuity, those are dollars that your heirs will never receive. Once you're gone, the annuity payments cease, and whatever capital might have been invested in that annuity is also gone - nothing will generally be given to your heirs (you can purchase a guarantee so that, if you die young, your heirs are guaranteed to receive some minimum amount, but this is not generally done due to the added cost).
The insured annuity idea works well provided that you or your spouse are insurable at standard rates (if you're high risk and the insurance is more costly, the idea may not make sense).


The example
Here's an example that comes courtesy of John Jordan, CFP. Consider Mike and Shannon. Both are 70 years of age and are in good health. They're concerned that their retirement income has been eroded by low interest rates and poor investment returns. The couple has a portfolio that includes $400,000 in GICs and T-Bills, earning an average of 4.5 per cent annually. Mike and Shannon would like to keep $150,000 fairly liquid for emergency purposes, but would like to increase their after-tax returns on the other $250,000.

Currently, the couple will earn $11,250 annually (4.5 per cent on $250,000) on the GICs and T-Bills. At a marginal tax rate of 43.41 per cent (the second highest marginal tax rate in Ontario), the couple will pay taxes of $4,884, and will be left with $6,366 after taxes annually.


Mike and Shannon have chosen to implement an insured annuity strategy. Here's what they did: They used $250,000 to purchase an annuity. The annuity will pay them $20,286 annually. Just $5,042 of the annuity payments are taxable. Why? Because each annuity payment is partly a tax-free return of their original capital, and partly interest income. The tax owing annually on the annuity payments will be just $2,189, and they will recoup some Old Age Security benefits in this case as well ($527 annually) since their taxable income won't be as high, leaving $18,624 after taxes annually in their hands.

Now, Mike and Shannon will use some of this annuity income to pay for a $250,000 life insurance policy that will pay out on the second spouse's death. This will replace the $250,000 that was used to buy the annuity. Their heirs will get this cash upon the second death. The life insurance premium annually is $6,252 in this case. So, the amount left in their hands annually until the second spouse dies (after taxes and insurance costs) is $12,372. This is much higher than the $6,366 with the GICs and T-Bills. In fact, the couple is better off by $6,006 annually.


Keep in mind that you'll be giving up some liquidity with this idea; you can't pull money out of the annuity except by way of your set monthly payments. So don't invest all of your cash in this strategy. Finally, be sure to apply for the life insurance first; if you're not insurable, you may choose not to buy the annuity.

This is a great strategy if you are in good health, or if you already have a permanent life insurance policy in force. This strategy was very popular in years gone by, but with the stock market vastly outperforming GIC's and Term Deposits over the last decade;save the last 18 months, keeping liquid in a RRIF was more popular. Now that growth and income is down the tubes, the insured annuity strategy is paying the highest return in town.


Edit: Nerding out a little, I ran real quotes for the life insurance and annuity.

Best life insurance rate for a couple age 70 in good health is $5,047.50/y from Industrial Alliance Pacific

A non-reducing Annuity, (payments stay the same after the first death) will currently pay $17,917.47/y from Canada Life. Taxable portion $4964.10

A reducing Annuity, which drops to 70% after the first death is currently paying $19,773.15/y also from Canada Life. Taxable portion $4803.09

A reducing Annuity, which drops to 50% after the first death will pay $21,229.32 from, you guessed it, Canada Life. Taxable portion $4450.80

You also can't get 4.5% from a GIC right now, highest I see is 3.55% for 5 years from Empire Life, but lets assume they have some older GICs that are paying 4.5%

Going the GIC route the couple will be left with $6,366 after taxes annually.

Non-reducing Annuity $10,715.05 after taxes and insurance.

70% reducing Annuity $12,640.63 after taxes and insurance, until the first death then, $10,479.04  after taxes. There is no insurance cost as the policy is paid up on the first death.

50% reducing Annuity $14,249.73 after taxes and insurance, until the first death then, $9,648.61 after taxes. There is no insurance cost as the policy is paid up on the first death.
So which would you prefer?
One point that needs to be made, is that using a prescribed annuity, which uses return of capital to keep taxes down, starts to result in higher taxes in later years. As the original capital is paid out the the annuity more and more of the payments come from interest earned. Eventually the taxable portion will grow to the entire annuity payment. In later years the benefit from the strategy starts to reduce.

Monday, January 25, 2010

Taxation of Critical Illness and Disability Insurance Cheat Sheet

Great West Life, one of the companies I do a fair amount of Living Benefits business with has a great cheat sheet for the taxation of Critical Illness and Disability Insurance. I'll let the sheet do the rest.


Edit: Yay for JPEG compression, better quality here Link to PDF

Edit 2: Replaced images with better quality PNG





Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Employment Insurance for Self Employed Individuals


January 2011, we are supposed to see the introduction of the new Employment Insurance (EI) benefits for Self Employed Individuals. As a self employed person this is of some interest to me. The benefits available are:
Starting January 31, 2010 you can apply for the program, however, you must pay premiums for a period of one year before you can make any claim. Furthermore, once you opt in to the program you cannot opt out in the future.

Self employed people are not eligible for income replacement due to job loss, work slowdowns, business closure etc. These types of claim fall into the "regular claim" category which accounts for nearly 60% of all EI claims, yet you still gotta pay the full premium even though the benefits you are eligible for, only account for about 24% of all claims, good deal... /s

Premiums for EI are normally split between the Employee and Employer, the Employee pays 1.73% of their gross earnings to a maximum of $747.36 and the Employer pays 2.422% of the employee’s earnings to a maximum of $1046.30. The maximum benefit and premiums are based on the Yearly Maximum Pensionable Earnings (YMPE) which for 2010 is $43,200. The self employed are required to pay BOTH premiums, or 4.152% of their earnings into EI. This brings the maximum premium to $1793.66 for the year.

Let’s see what kind of disability policy we can buy for $1793.66 or $149.47 a month. But first some assumptions, for all cases we will assume that the individuals earnings are exactly $43,200 as this is the maximum that EI can provide. Individual policies can easily go higher. EI is not dependent on age, health, or occupation so I will compare to two different scenarios to see how things stack up in both best and worst case scenarios. Furthermore, I can’t actually illustrate an apples to apples comparison of EI to a Disability policy. They simply do not make disability policies that suck as hard as EI benefits do. *since I already know how this ends, I think my bias is starting to show through don’t you?



I have illustrated using as close as possible but the differences are still pretty vast. Think of this as a Crab Apples (EI) to Red Delicious Apples  comparison.

Self Employed Individual EI
55% of your pre-disability income, to a maximum of $457 per week, TAXABLE
Benefits Start after 14 days of injury or illness, and lasts for 15 weeks.
Premium Cost: $1793.66

Best Case Scenario – Personal Disability
Male, Age 25, Non-Smoker, annual income $43,200
75% of your pre-disability income, to a maximum of $675 per week, Non-Taxable
Benefit Start on first day of accident or illness, and last for 24 MONTHS.
Annual Premium Cost: $1261.00 (hmm... though choice here /s)

The personal disability policy not only pays your nearly double the income after tax, it pays it two weeks sooner and three and a half times as long. Furthermore, the premium is $500 a year less expensive. If you are young and in good health the choice is obvious.

Worst Case Scenario - Personal Disability
Male age 55, Smoker, annual income $43,200
70% of pre-disability income, to a maximum of $630 per week, Non-Taxable
Benefits start on first day of accident or illness, and lasts for 24 months
Annual Premium Cost: $2051.55 (not so good)

The tides turn if you are older and unhealthy. You are still getting more income and better benefit periods but the cost has gone up dramatically. I would try and reduce the benefits to be more apples to apples, but I can’t, this is the crappiest policy my software will let me illustrate. *there is that bias again Still for an extra $35.17 a month you are getting a way better policy than what EI can provide.

So if you were contemplating the new Self Employed Individual EI plan, don’t. You can probably get a far better disability benefit from a personal policy. Even in our worst case scenario I would wager that the extra bucks are worth the better coverage. The saving grace of this new EI plan is that if you are uninsurable, you previously had no options at all. If you have a health problem that excludes you from getting disability insurance EI is now an option that wasn’t there before. The disability policy also doesn’t allow for benefits to be paid during parental or maternity leave, but these this can, usually, be planned for in advance.

TL;DR If you are self employed and were contemplating the new EI benefits for self employed individuals, you will probably be better served by a better/cheaper/faster disability policy. Unless, you are old and/or uninsurable.

E.O.&E.

Monday, January 4, 2010

Happy New Year

2010 brings with it a few new changes to the benefits and insurance world. Here are a few.

Effective January 1, 2010 the Medical Services Plan of BC (MSP) rates will increase for the first time since July 1, 2005.



EFFECTIVE JANUARY 1, 2010
Adjusted Net Income
Subsidy Level
One Person
Family of Two
Family of Three or More
$0 - $22,000
100% premium assistance
$0.00
$0.00
$0.00
$22,001 - $24,000
80% premium assistance
$11.40
$20.40
$22.80
$24,001 - $26,000
60% premium assistance
$22.80
$40.80
$45.60
$26,001 - $28,000
40% premium assistance
$34.20
$61.20
$68.40
$28,001 - $30,000
20% premium assistance
$45.60
$81.60
$91.20
Over $30,000
Full Rate
$57.00
$102.00
114.00


Employment Insurance (EI) rates have also changed for 2010.

2009


New rates effective January 1, 2010
Maximum insurance earnings
$42,300


$43,200
Maximum weekly EI benefit 
$447


$457


Employment Insurance (all provinces except Quebec)
2009
New rates for 2010
Maximum insurable earnings
$42,300.00
$43,200.00
Maximum weekly benefit
$447.00
$457.00

Employee premium rate
(per $100 of insurable earnings)

$1.73
$1.73
Employer premium rate
(per $100 of insurable earnings)

$2.42
$2.42
Maximum annual employee premium
$731.79
$747.36
Maximum annual employer premium
$1024.51
$1046.30

Benefit plans with Short Term Disability plans will likely see a slight change to benefits and premiums. Benefit plans with wording related to EI maximums will also be effected.




Annual Maximums
In addition to these government changes, most plan maximums are based on calendar year cycles, so dental, medical and paramedical limits have been reset. Vision Care is usually based on a 24 month cycle so benefits may not have reset this year.


Group RRSPs and Pensions
will have ended for the tax year, most group plans do not allow for additional deposits to be made after the year end. Personal RRSP's allows you to make deposits until the end of February and claim the deduction on last years tax return, group plans only take into account contributions made in the same calendar year.


Salary Updates
The begining of the year is often a time when raises in salary are made. remember to update employee earnings for Life Insurance and Disability plans as these benefits can be tied to an employee's salary. Insurance benefits are based on what has been reported to the insurance company and paid in premium, not necessarily what the employee is actually earning. So if you fail to report an increase in salary, and only pay premiums for the lesser amount, the employee will not receive the total benefit they are entitled to.



That is all I am aware of for now, if anything else crops up I will let you know.