Retiring abroad, as a Canadian
Your encore years don't have to happen here.
"Retiring abroad" actually means two very different things, tax-wise — and mixing them up is an expensive mistake.
Snowbird, or non-resident?
If you keep your home, health card, and ties to Canada and just spend winters in Arizona or Portugal, you're still a Canadian tax resident. Nothing about your CPP, OAS, RRIF, or provincial tax changes — you're taxed exactly as if you never left. The only planning question is a spending one: budgeting a travel-heavy go-go phase without running down the accounts you'll need in your no-go years, which the plan builder's spending-phase and one-time-event fields already handle.
Formally becoming a non-resident — cutting your residential ties to Canada — is a different situation entirely. CRA stops taxing your income under the regular federal/provincial brackets and instead applies flat withholding at source: 25% on CPP, OAS, and RRIF withdrawals, with capital gains on non-registered accounts realized (and taxed) the moment you leave, not deferred. You lose the basic personal amount, the age amount, pension splitting — every credit in the resident calculation — but you also leave provincial tax behind entirely.
Try it both ways
Enter your numbers once and see the after-tax estate both ways — staying a resident of the province you pick, versus becoming a non-resident on the same balances and spending target.
The 25% is a ceiling, not a quote.
That flat rate is CRA's default non-treaty withholding. Canada has tax treaties with the US, Portugal, Mexico, and dozens of other countries that often cut the rate on periodic pension and RRIF income to 15% or lower. Your destination country will usually want to tax you too, though a treaty often credits the Canadian tax you already paid. This model doesn't know which country you're moving to, treaty rates, or the destination's own income tax — it shows you Canada's worst-case flat withholding, not your actual combined tax bill. Get real cross-border tax advice before you cut residential ties.
For the full picture — a couple, part-time consulting income, CPP/OAS timing, RRIF minimums, and the after-tax estate a real plan leaves behind — build your full plan, free, where "Non-resident" is a checkbox under Modelling knobs.