its clear how your situation could be abused. i am not suggesting that you have done this, but that it creates an interesting loophole for the wealthy by harboring investements into other countries capital.
Lets say you are a 0.1%er who happens to live in canada. Invest everything on canadas terms, then move to the USA. receive foodstamps, welfare checks and the likes for XX years. Go back to canadian citizenship and cash out. Darn, looks like tax payers supported the ultra wealthy while they just got richer eh?
The TFSA is not something that can be abused by a high income individual.
It has a $6,000 yearly contribution limit.
Canada, if anything, has an investment tax scheme which favours middle class investors. For someone making millions of dollars Capital gains tax is tied to your income tax bracket in Canada so it is very likely that you would end up paying higher taxes.
Canada also has a tax and income information sharing with the USA, so someone making big bucks in investments in Canada could not benefit from means tested programs in the US.
I haven't looked into the exact details of Peter Thiel's IRA, but those have a contribution limit too, and look at all the press recently about him "abusing" [0] that.
[0] I can't claim to know enough of his specific situation and the exact regulations to have an opinion on whether that's a fair characterization.
He bought paypal stock privately when it was almost worthless, which the roth ira allowed, then the stock exploded.
I mean, sure, if you can tell the future you can do what Peter did.
I don't have an axe to grind against him or what he did to be clear.
My point is that he bought private stock, something that is privileged, so it's not entirely accurate to say that all people benefit from a roth IRA equally.
I personally don't think that the average person has the ability to take similar advantage, even though they both have the same limitations on paper.
Lets say you are a 0.1%er who happens to live in canada. Invest everything on canadas terms, then move to the USA. receive foodstamps, welfare checks and the likes for XX years. Go back to canadian citizenship and cash out. Darn, looks like tax payers supported the ultra wealthy while they just got richer eh?