Benefits tested on family income

Several federal and Ontario transfers are calculated on family net income and on facts the planner does not collect — how many children you have, their ages, your rent or property tax, your residency.

What the engine does

Nothing. These benefits are absent from the projection.

That is a deliberate omission rather than an oversight: a benefit guessed wrong is worse than one plainly absent, because it silently inflates every year of the plan and the error compounds. The warning fires whenever a household holds two people, which is the case where the amounts are usually largest.

What is missing, concretely

• Canada Child Benefit — the largest of them for a family with young children, reduced on a schedule of family net income.
• GST/HST credit — quarterly, income-tested.
• Ontario Trillium Benefit — the energy, property-tax and sales-tax credits.

If your household would receive these, read the projection as a floor.