Hudson Bay Finance · Blog
How to check your TFSA contribution room when the CRA figure is behind
The CRA says to calculate TFSA room from your own records, not your CRA account. Here is the formula it publishes and where each input comes from.
There is a version of this question that has an easy answer and a version that does not.
The easy version is “what number is showing in my CRA account”. The version worth answering is “what is my room right now”, and the CRA answers that one itself, in one sentence: “Use your own financial records to calculate your available contribution room, not the information in your CRA account” (canada.ca).
That is the agency instructing you not to use its own number as your working figure. Everything below is how to do what it asks.
The formula, as the CRA publishes it
Four inputs, one subtraction:
- The TFSA dollar limit of the current calendar year
- plus any unused contribution room from previous years
- plus any withdrawals made the previous year
- minus any contributions already made this year
That is the agency’s own arrangement, on its calculate-your-room page (canada.ca).
Note what is not in it. Withdrawals made this year are absent, deliberately. They belong to next year’s line, not this one.
Input one: this year’s dollar limit
The one number you do not have to derive. “The TFSA dollar limit for 2026 is $7,000. The dollar limit is added to your contribution room on January 1, 2026” (canada.ca).
Input two: unused room carried forward
This is the input the CRA account is genuinely useful for, with one condition attached: use the figure from a year that has been fully processed, not the one sitting on the screen today.
The processing schedule is published. “TFSA records from 2025 will be processed by April 2026”, and more generally, “The TFSA information in your CRA account is only updated once per year in the spring with your transactions of the previous year” (canada.ca).
So the account figure is a closed balance for a completed year. Treat it as an opening position, then carry it forward yourself.
Input three: last year’s withdrawals
From your statements, not from memory, and dated. The amount matters and so does the year it fell in.
Your institution reports these on a schedule of its own: “Your TFSA issuer must report all the withdrawals you make during the year to the CRA by the end of February of the next year” (canada.ca). The January 1 timing behind this input has rules of its own, covered in TFSA withdrawal rules: when the room you took out comes back.
Input four: this year’s contributions, all of them
Every contribution to every TFSA you hold, at every institution. The CRA is specific that a single statement is not enough on its own: “If you have more than one TFSA, be sure to consider all the financial statements you receive from all issuers to get your complete TFSA information” (canada.ca).
When this input goes wrong, the reason is usually structural rather than careless. A bank shows you the room for the accounts it holds. Your room is a fact about you, not about one institution. The CRA names contributing “to multiple TFSAs without tracking your total contribution amount” as one of the three ways an excess amount happens (canada.ca). What an excess amount costs once it exists is worked through in what the TFSA over-contribution penalty actually costs.
The contribution side also moves faster than any reporting: “When you contribute to your TFSA, it reduces your available contribution room immediately by the same amount that you contributed” (canada.ca).
The CRA’s own worked example
Its arithmetic, not ours. A saver ends 2025 with $6,000 of unused room, having withdrawn $4,000 during 2025. At the start of 2026 the calculation runs (canada.ca):
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Unused contribution room at the end of 2025 | $6,000 |
| + 2025 withdrawal | $4,000 |
| + 2026 dollar limit | $7,000 |
| = Available contribution room at the start of 2026 | $17,000 |
The $4,000 is the interesting line. During 2025 that withdrawal added nothing to the available room. On January 1 it did.
Two tools the CRA gives you
There is a paper route and a screen route, and the agency publishes both (canada.ca).
The paper route is Form RC343, the TFSA contribution room worksheet, fillable or printable.
The screen route is inside your CRA account, and it is buried: Individual account, then Savings and pension plans, then View TFSA details, then Contribution room, then the calculation option in the warning message box, then “Do your own calculation”. The name of that last button is the whole point.
If the CRA’s record and yours disagree
Do not adjust yours to match. The CRA routes this back to the institution: “If you disagree with any of the information the CRA has on file, including dates or amounts of contributions or withdrawals that your TFSA issuer has provided to us, contact your TFSA issuer. If any information provided by the issuer about your account is incorrect, the issuer must send us an amended report so that we can update our records” (canada.ca).
The correction flows issuer to agency. You cannot file it yourself, and you will want your dated record in hand when you make the call.
The part that has to survive to next January
The formula takes a minute. What it needs is a year of dated entries across every account you hold, and that is the part that decays. A folder of statements is not a record until someone adds them up, and the person who has to add them up is usually doing it under time pressure in February.
Hudson Bay Finance makes a contribution-room tracker that holds that record for you, current to your last entry. Contributions and withdrawals go in with their dates, across accounts, and the running figure is yours rather than a report of what someone filed last year. TFSA tracking is free.
If you want the single number for this year first, the free TFSA contribution limit page carries it with the CRA page it came from.
Written by Mo Kechout All posts