RRIF Minimum Withdrawal: Check the December 31 Top-Up Before the Year Closes

The factor table first: what your age takes out this year

The rule underneath the table is one multiplication. The carrier of a RRIF has to pay a minimum amount every year after the year the RRIF is set up, and the amount is the fair market value of the property held in the RRIF at the start of the year, multiplied by a prescribed factor. At 70 or younger the factor is a formula, 1 divided by (90 minus your age at the beginning of the year), which is where the 4.00 percent at 65 comes from. From 71 the factor comes from the CRA chart above. Those factors were last revised in 2015, so the table you may have printed years ago still reads correctly. What has changed since then is you: your age, and therefore your factor, goes up every year.

The misconception: a payment set at 71 still covers the minimum at 78

It feels like it should. The monthly payment has arrived on schedule for years, the institution has never flagged a problem mid-year, and nothing about the account looks broken. But run the two growth rates against each other. A monthly payment set at age 71 was sized against a 5.28 percent factor. By 78 the factor is 6.36 percent, roughly a fifth higher, and the payment amount has not moved at all unless someone moved it. Market growth in the account widens the gap further, because the minimum is a percentage of the January 1 value, not a fixed dollar figure carried forward. The shortfall does not announce itself. It accumulates quietly, one underpaid year at a time, and December is when a holder can still measure it and close it for the current year.

Two readers can stop here. If your RRIF was set up in 2026, no minimum is required for 2026 at all: the first minimum is due in the following calendar year. And if your payments are calculated by the carrier as the minimum each year, rather than set as a fixed dollar amount, the carrier's schedule already follows the factor. The check below is for everyone whose payment is a dollar figure chosen in an earlier year, which is a large share of RRIFs in practice.

The worked example: a $400,000 RRIF at 75

Take a RRIF worth $400,000 on January 1, 2026, held by someone who was 75 at the start of the year. The factor is 5.82 percent, so the 2026 minimum is $400,000 times 0.0582, which is $23,280. Now suppose the scheduled payment is $1,500 a month, set several years ago and never revisited. Twelve payments total $18,000. The gap between what the year requires and what the schedule delivers is $5,280, and that gap is the December top-up: a single additional withdrawal of $5,280, instructed in time to be paid by December 31.

The tax shape of that top-up matters. No tax is withheld on the minimum amount, so a top-up that lands exactly on the minimum arrives whole, and the tax on it is settled later, with the return or through instalments. Overshoot on purpose and the shape changes: amounts above the minimum are withheld at source, at 10 percent on the first $5,000 of the excess, 20 percent on the part from $5,001 to $15,000, and 30 percent above that. An extra $10,000 lump sum, for example, sits in the 20 percent band, so $2,000 is withheld and $8,000 arrives. Quebec residents face a different split, 5, 10 or 15 percent federal plus 14 percent Quebec on the excess. Either way, withholding is a prepayment toward the year's tax, not the final tax itself.

The December top-up check, step by step

1. Find the January 1 value. It is the fair market value of the RRIF at the start of 2026, shown on the year-end 2025 statement or the carrier's online record. This number does not change with anything the market did during 2026.
2. Find your factor. Use the age at January 1, from the CRA chart, or the formula if that age is 70 or younger. If the minimum was set up on a spouse or common-law partner's age, use that age instead: the factor follows the age chosen when the RRIF was set up.
3. Multiply. January 1 value times factor is the year's minimum. Write it down as a dollar figure.
4. Total what has actually been paid out in 2026. Add every payment received from January through November, plus any December payment already scheduled. Use payment records, not the amount you believe the schedule to be.
5. Subtract. Minimum minus payments is the top-up. If the result is zero or negative, no top-up is needed this year, and the check is done.
6. Instruct the top-up early in December. Most institutions need withdrawal instructions by early December to guarantee the payment clears before year-end, and the minimum must be received by December 31. A top-up instructed on December 30 is a hope, not a plan.
7. If cash is the obstacle, withdraw in kind. You do not have to sell investments to satisfy the minimum: securities such as stocks, bonds or mutual fund units can be transferred directly from the RRIF into a non-registered account, and the transfer counts toward the minimum. The holding changes address, not ownership, though its tax shelter ends.

No tax withheld on the minimum: plan the spring bill in December

The minimum arrives with nothing held back, and it is still income. The annuitant reports it as income and pays the tax with the return, or through instalments. For a household where the RRIF is a main income source, that pattern has a second act: a large balance owing at filing is exactly what puts a taxpayer into required tax instalments for the following year, under the test that applies when net tax owing is more than $3,000 for the current year and in either of the two previous years. December is the cheap time to see this coming. If the year's RRIF income, pensions and other income point to a spring balance, set the reserve aside now, while the December payment is in hand, rather than discovering the bill in April.

Traps and fine print

• The spouse's-age election cannot be fixed in December. Basing the minimum on a younger spouse or common-law partner's age is the one real lever for lowering it: a 71-year-old with a 64-year-old spouse would use 3.85 percent instead of 5.28 percent. But the election is made when the RRIF is set up, before the first payment, and it cannot be changed later, even if the spouse dies or the couple separates. December's job is narrower: confirm which age your carrier is actually using, so the factor in your check is the right one.
• Mutual fund redemption costs are not part of the minimum. The CRA treats the costs of redeeming mutual fund units as expenses of the RRIF. If a top-up is funded by redeeming units, the amount that counts toward the minimum is the payment itself, not the payment plus redemption costs.
• Withholding tiers apply to the excess as a lump sum. The 10, 20 and 30 percent rates are chosen by the size of the amount above the minimum, and the rate applies at that band. Splitting an overshoot into smaller requests does not change the year's tax; it only changes how much is prepaid.
• After 65, RRIF income has a second use. RRIF income qualifies for the pension income credit and for pension income splitting with a spouse, up to 50 percent. Neither changes the December top-up, but both belong in the same year-end conversation, because they change what the withdrawal costs the household.

The December decisions, in order

First, measure: January 1 value, factor, payments made, difference. Second, close the gap if there is one, by December 31, in cash or in kind. Third, look at the tax the year's payments carry and decide whether a reserve or voluntary withholding should be in place before January's payment lands. Those three decisions, made in that order, are the whole annual maintenance of a RRIF, and none of them requires predicting a market or timing a trade. The account was designed to pay money out on a schedule the CRA sets. December is simply the month to confirm the schedule was kept.

— Penny Hughes, Money Writer — Saving Desk