FHSA Calculator (2026)

Room is built year by year

The year your first FHSA opens, you get $8,000 of participation room. Every year after that, the room is the same $8,000 plus a carryforward: whatever you left unused the year before, but never more than $8,000. The total can't exceed what's left of the $40,000 lifetime limit once everything you've already put in is subtracted.

Take an account opened in 2024 with $3,000 added that year. In 2025 the room is $13,000. Leave 2025 untouched and the 2026 room is $16,000, not the $21,000 a running total would suggest. Nothing has been forfeited, though. The lifetime balance still has $37,000 to go; the cap on the carryforward only limits how quickly a late starter can catch up.

Opening the account is what starts the clock, not funding it. The CRA's own example is someone who opens an FHSA and puts nothing in: their notice of assessment shows $16,000 of room for the following year. Room runs on the calendar year, with no 60-day grace period like the RRSP's, and contributions and transfers in from an RRSP draw on the same room. Growth inside the account doesn't use any.

What the deduction saves, province by province

An FHSA contribution comes off your taxable income, so it saves tax at the rate on the top slice of what you earn. Federal tax supplies most of it: on $85,000 of employment income in Ontario, an $8,000 deduction cuts federal tax by $1,640 of the $2,372 total. Where you live sets the rest:

Figures come from running the calculator's tax engine twice for each jurisdiction, once with the deduction and once without, rounded to the dollar. CPP and EI don't change, because they're charged on earnings, not taxable income. In Quebec the deduction counts on both returns: Revenu Québec's line 215 takes the same amount you deduct federally.

The deduction can wait for a better year

Contributing and deducting are separate decisions. Any contribution you don't claim in the year it's made carries forward with no time limit, even after the account is closed, so someone expecting a raise can put money in now, let it grow tax-free, and claim the deduction when their bracket is higher. In British Columbia, the same $8,000 saves $1,853 against $45,000 of income, $2,256 at $85,000 and $2,638 at $120,000. Two limits apply: an RRSP transfer into the FHSA uses room but is never deductible, and nothing contributed after your first qualifying withdrawal can be deducted.

When the account has to close

An FHSA has a fixed life. The participation period ends on December 31 of the year in which the earliest of three things happens: the 15th anniversary of opening your first FHSA, the year you turn 71, or the year after your first qualifying withdrawal. An account opened in 2024 by someone born in 1996 ends on December 31, 2039. Before then, anything still in it should either go to a home purchase, move directly to an RRSP or RRIF, which uses no RRSP room and triggers no tax, or come out as a taxable withdrawal. Whatever is left when the period ends is taxed as income for that year.

Cases the calculator doesn't model

It assumes you've stayed within your room every year, haven't withdrawn anything and haven't designated an excess amount. Putting in more than your room creates an excess FHSA amount, taxed at 1% a month on the highest excess in that month until it's removed, and that excess also reduces the room for the years after. Withdrawals and designated amounts can restore room through a re-participation calculation the CRA describes separately. If any of those apply, the room on your CRA account or notice of assessment is the figure to rely on. Who can open an account, and what makes a withdrawal qualify, is set out in the FHSA eligibility guide.