What is The Smith Manoeuvre?
The Smith Manoeuvre employs refined and proven debt conversion techniques to transform mortgage interest into tax deductions. The strategy has a remarkable snowball effect that generates large and growing annual tax refunds, enables the homeowner to knock years off the life of a non-deductible mortgage, and builds an impressive financial portfolio at the same time.
Get it right
Please, educate yourself on the strategy from the source — right here!
As we all know, the internet can be a fantastic source of information – it has advanced the accrual of global knowledge to a great degree, indeed. However, it can also be a source of substantially misleading misinformation.
You may already have searched the internet for information on The Smith Manoeuvre, or you may be about to, but what you need to be very aware of is that there is a great deal of erroneous information out there. You will see ‘self-educated’ individuals, financial writers, and even financial professionals discussing or advising the public on the strategy when they are not entirely sure of what The Smith Manoeuvre is all about in the first place. They may think they understand it, they will tell you they do, they will give advice on it, they will instruct you on how to implement it – but they have it wrong. How many times we have seen, “I haven’t read the book, but…”! Many!
The Smith Manoeuvre is not an overly complicated financial strategy but there are a number of moving parts, and many people simply have not taken the time to fully understand it before they take to the public forum of the internet. This is not to say there aren’t those out there that truly do understand the strategy, but there are many who simply don’t have it right. And how do you know if they know it or not? Educate yourself from the source – right here.
Benefits
Get free tax refunds
Do you have the wrong kind of debt? The kind that is not tax deductible?
Most of us do. The wealthy have debt too. The difference is they routinely turn their loans into “good debt” by making the interest tax deductible with the help of expensive accountants and lawyers. So while the wealthy are transforming their house mortgage loans into free tax refunds, the rest of us are paying off huge amounts of mortgage interest with after-tax income. Until now. The Smith Manoeuvre has introduced a new, simple, and powerful method that extends those tax-saving benefits to the rest of Canadians. It is now easy for you and your financial planner Smith Manoeuvre Certified Professionals to start turning your bad debt into good debt, right away.
Invest more, earlier
Are you investing enough, soon enough?
Most Canadians aren’t. After ever-rising taxes and the cost of making ends meet, most of us don’t have the resources to put away 10% of our income and max out our RRSPs or TFSAs every year. The benefits of compound interest, which are essential to our long-term financial well-being, remain elusive. But there is a way to change that. It’s done by transforming mortgage interest into tax refunds. Next to winning the lottery, nothing improves your cash flow more efficiently than the act of reducing your income tax – and doing it by making your mortgage tax-deductible. The Smith Manoeuvre is a remarkably efficient way for you and your family to raise large amounts of new money, through free tax refunds, so that you can start building a larger nest egg, sooner. You may or may not have a monthly savings program already (congratulations if you do!) but how would you like to have an additional $500 per month to invest for your future? Maybe $750 per month? More?
Pay off the non-deductible mortgage
Is your mortgage killing you softly?
A $300,000 mortgage at 4.0% over 25 years will set you back about $173,000 in interest costs. That $300,000 will end up costing you over $473,000. And that’s after-tax income, which means you’ll have to earn about $675,000 to pay off your home if you’re at the 30% tax bracket. No wonder it’s difficult to save for the future. But if you make it tax deductible using The Smith Manoeuvre, you will recover a good chunk of that interest in the form of yearly tax refunds. Use the tax department’s money to pay down your expensive, non-deductible mortgage faster, and you’ll see it melt away many years sooner than you imagined possible. It stands to reason: if you are going to have mortgage debt, why not make it tax deductible? The Smith Manoeuvre shows you how.
Accelerators
The Smith Manoeuvre Accelerators can help you pay down your mortgage debt faster and increase your portfolio growth.
The Smith Manoeuvre is an extremely efficient method of accomplishing a number of any typical Canadian’s goals simultaneously: eliminate your expensive, non-deductible mortgage debt faster than the banks would have you, generate valuable tax deductions every year, and invest for your future – starting now.
The book, “Is Your Mortgage Tax Deductible? – The Smith Manoeuvre”, not only explains in detail how you can greatly improve your financial situation using the appropriate home financing structure and nothing but the existing mortgage payment you are already making each month, but the book will also teach you how you can greatly speed up the process using mortgage conversion accelerators.
Cash Flow Diversion
Cash Flow Diversion
Learn how to redirect any existing savings programs you may have established to greatly magnify the benefit of your current savings program. Are you putting $200 away each month for your future? Make that $200 work more than once via the Cash Flow Diversion technique. Still get those funds invested each month for your retirement but also speed up the conversion of your mortgage and generate valuable tax deductions at the same time.
Debt Swap
Debt Swap
Do you have $5,000, $10,000, $50,000 in paid-up investments sitting in an open investment account somewhere? Learn how you can further accelerate the conversion of your mortgage using these investments – start with the $10,000 you already invested and end with the same $10,000 invested but convert $10,000 of your non-deductible mortgage debt to deductible debt to generate valuable tax deductions. And accomplish this in around a week. You may even be able to fully convert your mortgage immediately with what you already have.
Cash Flow Dam
Cash Flow Dam
Do you own your own small unincorporated business? A home-based business or maybe a rental property? The Cash Flow Dam is an extremely effective accelerator for The Smith Manoeuvre. It can take years and years off of the amortization of your expensive, non-deductible mortgage.
DRiP
DRiP
When you invest in securities, there may be a dividend reinvestment program (DRiP) you can opt-in to which would automatically reinvest any dividends your holdings earn. However, if you are implementing The Smith Manoeuvre, you may want to request you receive these dividends in cash instead so you can use them to prepay the mortgage and then get them invested. Make your money work more than once.
Prime the Pump
Prime the Pump
When you obtain the appropriate financing with which to implement The Smith Manoeuvre, you may have access to some equity which you can invest directly and immediately. While this will be new borrowing and you should discuss option this thoroughly with your advisor, you may decide to invest some or all of it right away to take even more advantage of compound growth and increased tax deductions to eliminate your expensive non-deductible mortgage even sooner.
Reviews
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Frequently Asked Questions
You’ve got questions? We’ve got answers.
Yes.
The Smith Manoeuvre uses the common tools of Canadian financial institutions and CRA (Revenue Canada). It has been reviewed by the CRA and endorsed by economists, financial planners and financial institutions. It is a legal and common practice to deduct interest when you borrow to invest to produce income.
Debt is good when it is tax-deductible.
It is bad when it’s the wrong kind of debt – the kind that is not deductible against your income.
Bad debt can be converted to good debt if you employ The Smith Manoeuvre.
Wealthy people have debt, and they like it that way. They use their after-tax cash for toys and holidays. However, they borrow to invest and deduct the interest on those investment loans. That’s called “good debt” and it’s how the rich become richer.
If you have house mortgage debt, it is the wrong kind of debt until you convert it to tax-deductible debt. The Smith Manoeuvre’s streamlined techniques show you how to make it happen.
Yes. By converting your mortgage into a tax-deductible loan, you are turning the interest into a tax deduction. When you subtract that deduction from your income, you get a tax refund. That refund is free money. You don’t have to invest any of your own income or increase your debt to get the tax refund.
The refund you receive from investing in RRSPs is not free money. You pay for your RRSP by using your own after-tax income to buy the tax refund. Then they tax you at your maximum tax rate when you start to take the money out of your RRSP.
It is a new method of designing your finances that extends the remarkable benefits of debt conversion to almost anyone with a mortgage. Wealthier Canadians commonly employ expensive tax accountants and tax lawyers to replace their non-tax deductible loans (houses, vehicles) with investment loans.
We have improved upon those methods, introducing a new procedure that enables the rest of us to convert our non-deductible mortgage to a tax-deductible loan.
Until now, debt conversion practices have been too cumbersome and expensive for most people. The Smith Manoeuvre changes that.
While others recommend paying off the expensive non-deductible mortgage and THEN borrowing to invest, The Smith Manoeuvre shows you how to do both at the same time. Sooner is better in both cases.
The Smith Manoeuvre actually protects your home ownership by increasing your financial security significantly.
Your debt level need not be increased. Your non-deductible mortgage is reduced while your investment loan and portfolio grows.
When your mortgage is fully converted, you can expect that the value of your portfolio will exceed the amount of the investment loan, which you can then pay off. Or leave in place to continue to generate tax refunds every year for the rest of your life. Your choice.
You can build a safe portfolio using a good financial planner and sound investment practices. Risk is spread out over a long period of time, making unpredictable market conditions manageable.
The higher risk is not investing at all, or not investing soon enough, to meet the needs of retirement and periods of insecurity. This is why an increasing number of seniors are ending up house rich, but cash poor, with little or no retirement income on which to live. The large increase in the number of seniors forced to take a Reverse Mortgage such as CHIP, (the Canadian Home Income Plan) is proof of that.
A mortgage loan is the wrong kind of debt. The interest, paid for with after-tax income, over a long amortization period, severely hampers your financial future.
If your home is your sole investment, you have put all your eggs in one basket. House values may drop as baby-boomers retire, causing a reduction in demand. Diversifying your investments, and investing earlier in life, is a safer course of action.
You ‘risked’ your house as soon as you got a mortgage. Before you ever heard of The Smith Manoeuvre, you and your bank had an understanding that if you didn’t make payments on the money they lent you, they could take your house. Nothing changes in that regard – if you owe someone money and you don’t pay them, then they have a right to the asset you offered as collateral. But you are making your payments now and you will continue to make them after you implement the strategy. Thousands of people have used or are currently using The Smith Manoeuvre. If you’re going to have a mortgage debt, why not turn it into a “good debt” that generates tax refunds and increases your investment portfolio, just like they did?
No problem. That has happened many times to people using The Smith Manoeuvre, and the book explains how you can keep your deductible debt intact. It is a routine procedure, which ensures you need not have a concern about moving to a different home.
The Smith Manoeuvre provides a financial security blanket. It builds a free and clear investment portfolio that you can call upon if financial need arises. It gives you the freedom of generating cashflow in times of uncertainty or liquidating free and clear investments to reverse the program if necessary.
The beauty of The Smith Manoeuvre is that you can use your tax-deductible investment loan to buy all sorts of investments – not only stocks. You can invest in investment real estate, mutual funds, your business, your spouse’s business or someone else’s business. However, there are some ‘investments’ that while you may think would be eligible, actually are not. The book outlines all the choices.
No matter what you do, use a good financial planner and sound investment practices to build a balanced portfolio, and reduce exposure to stock market and real estate downturns.
Diversification is the golden rule of reducing risk. To have all of your assets tied up in high risk stocks – or even in your home – puts you at risk.
Unknown – it all depends on what you invest in. There are low-risk investments and there are high risk investments. But taking into consideration market peaks and valleys, almost every decade since 1950 has yielded at least 10% average annual rate of return in the markets, before tax. You and your Smith Manoeuvre Certified Professional investment advisor are free to apply your own assumptions to The Smith Manoeuvre. The Smithman Calculator will show you how you can make sumstantial gains with even quite conservative growth estimates.
The book provides step-by-step instructions for you and your financial planner to implement The Smith Manoeuvre, right away, completely legally.
The book explains the rationale behind the concepts, and behind every step of the process.
The book includes several different case studies which you can compare to your own circumstances.
The book describes other secrets you can use to enhance The Smith Manoeuvre.
The book shows you how to deal with your investment planner, your bank, and the CRA.
We strongly recommend that you read the book and understand the process before you see them. Please take note of our “Get it right” page of this website.
The Smithman Calculator is a fully customized, tested, integrated software program. It is ready to go so you and your financial planner can get started right away.
It customizes The Smith Manoeuvre to your circumstances, using your personal investment and mortgage assumptions. It generates easy-to-read results so you can immediately see how large the financial improvement will be for your family if you implement The Smith Manoeuvre. The Smithman calculator allows you to compare your future net worth The Smith Manoeuvre way, compared to the track you are currently following. The difference will amaze you.
The Smith Manoeuvre is indeed very good, and very true. It is completely legal. For over three decades, thousands of families have used or are using The Smith Manoeuvre. It has been reviewed by the CRA and endorsed by reputable clients, and experts.
Usually a HELOC is a second mortgage to secure a loan or a credit line. If money borrowed in this fashion is used for investment, the interest expense will generally be deductible. So the ability to do the borrowing part of The Smith Manoeuvre seems to be in place. Unfortunately, the other half of The Smith Manoeuvre, the ability to recover monthly reductions of the first mortgage in order to increase the investment portfolio, is impaired. Do not let a banker convince you to use a simple HELOC to implement The Smith Manoeuvre – there is a much smarter way to set up your financing that costs no more to establish than a HELOC, but avoids subsequent operational difficulties. It is called a readvanceable mortgage. Your financial planner and your mortgage broker will teach you the important reasons why you don’t want to use HELOC’s. Be certain you are getting a readvanceable mortgage.
Let’s say that the first month you implement The Smith Manoeuvre and your mortgage payment is $1,400, of which, $1,000 goes to the bank for interest and $400 goes to reduce the principal on your mortgage. You borrow back that $400 from the LOC (line of credit ) and invest it (this will yield tax deductions because the interest on the investment loan is tax deductible). The next month you make that same $1,400 mortgage payment but more goes toward principal reduction, say $402. On your credit line, the lender says you can now take out that $402 and you do so. However, you have about $2 of interest to pay on that first $400 you borrowed to invest last month from the LOC. So $2 is withdrawn to service the interest from the month before. Therefore you really only have $400 remaining to draw and invest. Next month same thing. Your mortgage principal is reduce $404, say, but you now owe $4 in interest on the LOC. In this fashion the amount you can invest each month stays a constant $400 every month and there was no new cash required from you because the amount you are required to pay in interest on the LOC is covered by the fact that the amount of principal reduction on your mortgage is increasing which comes across to the LOC to keep things in balance.
Media Highlights
As Seen In:
Freeflow Chat with Mitch Parmasar
Robinson and Mitch take less of a structured approach on this recorded Facebook Live interview. Free flowing conversation between the two of them (okay, maybe Robinson hogs the mic a bit…) but it feels good to get away from the powerpoint every once in a while!
The Smith Manoeuvre Explained – with Nolan Matthias
Nolan Matthias owns North America’s first-ever B-Corp certified mortgage company. What does that mean? I don’t know, but it sure sounds impressive. Here he takes some time out to satisfy his viewers’ requests for more information on tax-deductible mortgages.
The Vancouver Life Podcast/Youtube
Dan Wurtele and Ryan Dash run a popular podcast and Youtube channel providing information for those in real estate. Ryan was taking a bit of a holiday so Dan had me all to himself – for better or worse…
Darren Voros Youtube Interview – Part 1
A short 20 minutes documenting a budding bromance with a bit of tax-deductible mortgages thrown in to keep things light. If you’re tight on time, this is the interview to watch.
Darren Voros Youtube Interview – Part 2
And it continues…Part 2 of the interview with Darren Voros. Here we talk about the Accelerators for The Smith Manoeuvre as I battle the sun coming through the window.
Glo Says Let’s Talk Local, Vancouver!
Gloria Chong is a very active Vancouver-based podcaster determined to educate her fellow citizens in a number of different areas and bring them valuable content. Here Gloria interviews Robinson Smith on how Canadians (and Vancouverites) can enjoy tax deductible mortgages.
