Upon retirement, Ms. X, who was the sole member of an individual pension plan (“IPP”), started receiving monthly retirement benefits, subject to a 10-year guarantee. She died during the guarantee period, so that the monthly benefits were payable for the remainder of the guarantee period to her daughter, a U.S. resident. At the end of the guarantee period, the IPP will be wound up and the remaining funds distributed to the daughter.
After noting that although the term “periodic pension payment” is not defined in the Canada-U.S. Treaty, s. 5 of the Income Tax Conventions Interpretation Act “expressly excludes a lump sum payment,” CRA rejected the submission that the “final distribution payment to the daughter is simply an extension of the periodic guarantee payments that the daughter was receiving and thus should be eligible for the reduced withholding tax rate under the Treaty” (so that the non-Treaty reduced rate of 25% applied) stating:
[T]he final distribution payment is a lump sum payment of an actuarial surplus that relates to the IPP, which is a permissible distribution pursuant to [Reg.] 8502(d)(vi) … .
CRA went on to gratuitously state:
[A]ny additional payment that an IPP may be required to make in a particular year to comply with the IPP minimum amount rules in [Reg.] 8503(26) … is not considered to be a periodic pension payment. … Whether an IPP must make such a payment has to be determined each and every year by reference to the current value of the IPP’s assets and an age-based factor. …
Similarly, a commutation payment made to a member or a beneficiary of a member in full or partial satisfaction of their entitlement to benefits under a defined benefit RPP is not a periodic pension payment.