Taking Stock with Steele
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Taking Stock with Steele is our newsletter where we share our insights and expertise. Our goal is to ensure our clients are well informed. We shift through the noise and only bring important topics of discussion and planning points that are relevant and useful. We believe Knowledge Pays and we want our knowledge to pay for you.
At the start of the fall parliamentary session, the Liberal government announced changes to mortgage rules to spur purchases of new builds and make it easier for first-time home buyers to get on the property ladder...The biggest change was increasing the cap for insured mortgages to $1.5 million from $1.0 million, making it easier for more Canadians to qualify for an insured mortgage with less than a 20% down payment...The other major change to mortgage rules is expanding eligibility for 30-year mortgage amortizations for all first-time homebuyers and all buyers of new builds who require a high ratio mortgage.
As of June 25, 2024, the Canadian federal government's proposal to increase the capital gains inclusion rate from 1/2 to 2/3 above $250,000 for individual taxpayers each year is in full force...Most Canadians aren't expected to generate more than $250,000 in capital gains in any given year throughout their lifetimes...so these capital gains inclusion changes do not appear to affect many Canadians. While this is true for most tax years while living, there is one year that many Canadians will be affected by these new rules – the year of death.
Following up on a choppy week in late July, global equity markets were in turmoil to start the week of August 5th. Japan's NIKKEI index finished the day down over 12%, its steepest one-day decline since the 1987 market crash. It is not surprising that European and North American investors were on edge Monday morning following the historic declines experienced in Asia...Thankfully, investors recognized that the issues experienced in Japan and greater Asia were unique to Asia