The RRIF Minimum Isn’t the Risk. What It Triggers Is.
A retiree converts an RRSP into a RRIF, takes the government-mandated withdrawal, and assumes the story ends there: money comes out, tax gets paid, done. Then the tax bill arrives larger than expected, a notice from the Canada Revenue Agency asks for quarterly instalments, and somewhere in the mix an Old Age Security payment looks smaller than it used to. The withdrawal itself was never the surprise — its downstream effects were.