TFSA question

[b52shot]

Greetings,

I received a letter from CRA few days ago related to a TFSA account I opened back in 2011 saying that as a non-resident I'm not supposed to contribute to TFSA and I have to pay a penalty of 1% of the total contribution in 2011 for each month i'm in violation. Below is a brief history:
1. I landed in 2010 and left few weeks later
2. Visited Canada in 2011 for a couple of months and during my visit to one of the banks I was told I should open a TFSA account and I should be able to contribute up to $10000 (5000 for 2010, 5000 for 2011) which I did.
3. I moved permanently to Canada in 2012 and have been filing taxes for 2012 onwards.
I had no clue that i'm not supposed to be contributing as a non-resident for tax purposes, i was relatively new and went with the bank's recommendation. I was shocked that after 5 years of the incident, I receive that letter.

Did anyone face a similar situation ? Can I dispute this ? What are my options ?

Thanks

 

[Rob_TO]

You only option is probably to just pay CRA what they are saying you owe. CIC will not care if the bank told you bad info. And most likely the bank won't do anything either since this happened 5 years ago.

However you should probably talk to an accountant to be sure.

 

[expert_law]

Hello,
Can anyone help me with this - I received an educational letter from CRA on TFSA over-contribution. As per the letter, I have exceeded the TFSA contribution for 2022 by $9,000. So far, they are not charging penalty for this over-contribution. When I checked my CRA account it showed me that my contribution as of 1 Jan 2023 is only $2,500 (I guess this is due to the fact that a contribution room of $6,500 was added on 1st Jan 2023).

In this scenario, I have 2 questions:
a) What amount do I need to take out from my TFSA ($9,000 or $2,500) ?
b) How much time I have to withdraw the money (received the letter from CRA on 18th June 2023)? The money in TFSA is in form of Non-redeemable GIC and it is set to mature end of July'2023.

Thank you