As each year passes, many seniors face rising health expenses, especially when it comes to nursing home fees. Personal care homes equipped with government-subsidized beds charge fees based on each resident’s personal tax return. Therefore, in years of medical need, the greater the income you report on your tax return, the greater the fees you will pay at your nursing home residence.
In essence, the government will charge you 80% of your after -tax income for residential care home fees. This amount is determined using your net income (line 236 of your tax return), less your Registered Disability Savings Plan income, Universal Child Care Benefit income, and any income taxes paid.
For example, if your net income was $30,000, and you paid $3,000 in income tax, your after-tax income would be $27,000. Eighty per cent of this amount would be $21,600. Dividing this total by 12 would result in a monthly personal care home charge of $1,800.
There are allowances for lower income individuals who have an after-tax income less than $19,500. If you were in this situation, you would deduct $3,900 from your after-tax income to determine your monthly fee. The final fee would be subject to a minimum monthly amount that is set each year. This year, British Columbia’s minimum monthly public personal care home fee has been set at $958.90.
There are several strategies you may wish to consider in order to keep your residential care home costs down. One of the most important strategies would be to split your pension with your spouse. Ordinarily, the higher income spouse would want to split their pension with the lower income spouse, allowing for lower income tax rates. However, the nursing home fees are essentially an 80% tax, compared to a maximum 43.70% income tax rate. Therefore, it may make more sense for the lower income spouse to split their pension with the higher income spouse, if the lower income spouse is living in a nursing home.
In other tax-planning situations, pension-splitting percentages could allocate a maximum income to the lower-income spouse/resident which would still result in the minimum monthly fees.
In addition, if you are planning on transferring investments to your adult children in the future, it may make sense to transfer them now. This step could reduce the amount of investment income realized on your personal return, potentially allowing for a reduction in residential care home fees.
If this applies to you or your family, contact your Kemp Harvey Group professional.