OAS Clawback Calculator Canada 2026
Use this OAS clawback calculator Canada to see how much of your Old Age Security the recovery tax takes back in 2026 — enter your income and get the exact repayment, and what actually lands in your account each month.
Last updated: July 2026 · Service Canada · Amounts for July to September 2026
Your total income before the OAS pension itself is counted — pensions, salary, rental income, RRSP withdrawals, taxable interest, dividends and capital gains. This is your 2025 income, which sets the recovery tax on payments from July 2026 to June 2027.
Leave this blank and we use the full pension for your age. Fill it in if you receive a partial pension because you lived in Canada fewer than 40 years after turning 18.
What is the OAS clawback?
The clawback is not a nickname invented by accountants — it has an official name, the Old Age Security pension recovery tax, and it works like a second layer of tax that applies only to OAS. Once your net world income for a year passes the threshold, you repay 15 cents of every dollar above it. For the 2025 income year that threshold is $93,454, and the repayment it triggers is applied to your OAS payments from July 2026 through June 2027. That twelve-month lag is what confuses people: the income that shrinks this year’s pension was earned the year before last.
Service Canada does not send you a bill. Once the recovery tax is calculated it is deducted from your monthly OAS before it reaches you, spread across the twelve payments of the recovery period. If your income is high enough, the deduction consumes the entire pension and nothing arrives at all — that happens at $152,062 for someone aged 65 to 74, or $157,923 at 75 and over. The ceiling is higher for the older group only because their pension is 10% larger, so it takes more income to erase it.
How the repayment is calculated
The arithmetic is genuinely simple — the difficulty is knowing which income year and which threshold apply. Take your net world income, subtract the threshold, and multiply what is left by 15%.
Service Canada’s own worked example: the threshold for 2025 is $93,454. If your 2025 income was $100,000, the difference is $6,546. Multiply by 0.15 and the repayment is $981.90 — spread over the July 2026 to June 2027 payments, that is about $81.83 a month off your pension.
What counts as income is broader than employment earnings: private and public pensions, CPP, salary, rental income, RRSP withdrawals, taxable interest, dividends and capital gains all belong in the total. What does not count is the OAS pension itself, along with GIS, the Allowance, the Allowance for the Survivor, RDSP payments and GST/HST credit payments. That distinction matters — the pension being clawed back is not part of the income that triggers the clawback.
Recovery tax thresholds by period
Each recovery tax period runs July to June and is driven by the income you earned in the calendar year before it starts.
| Recovery tax period | Income year | Clawback starts | Fully gone (65–74) | Fully gone (75+) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| July 2025 to June 2026 | 2024 | $90,997 | $148,451 | $154,196 |
| July 2026 to June 2027 | 2025 | $93,454 | $152,062 | $157,923 |
| July 2027 to June 2028 | 2026 | $95,323 | $155,109 * | $161,088 * |
* Service Canada flags the maximum thresholds for the current tax year as estimates from January to September, based on maximum OAS pension amounts; they become final between October and December. The row that governs the pension you are receiving today is the middle one.
Frequently Asked Questions
At what income does OAS get clawed back?
The recovery tax begins once your net world income passes $93,454 for the 2025 income year, which affects payments from July 2026 to June 2027. From there you repay 15% of every dollar above the threshold, and the pension is entirely recovered at $152,062 if you are 65 to 74, or $157,923 if you are 75 or older.
Does the OAS pension itself count toward the clawback?
No. OAS, GIS, the Allowance and the Allowance for the Survivor are all excluded from the income used to calculate the recovery tax, as are RDSP payments and the GST/HST credit. Almost everything else counts, including CPP, workplace pensions, RRSP withdrawals, rental income and investment income.
Can I avoid or reduce the clawback?
The lever most people have is timing rather than avoidance. Deferring OAS past 65 raises the eventual pension by 0.6% a month and can move the start date past your highest-earning years, so less of the pension is exposed. Managing when you draw RRSP funds, realise capital gains or convert to a RRIF also changes which year the income lands in. These are planning decisions worth taking to an accountant — the arithmetic here tells you what is at stake, not what to do about it.
Why is my OAS smaller than the maximum even though my income is low?
Because the full pension requires 40 years of residence in Canada after age 18. Fewer than 40 years produces a partial pension regardless of income, and the recovery tax is a separate reduction applied on top of that. Enter your actual monthly amount in the optional field above to see the clawback applied to your real pension rather than the maximum.
Related pages:
📋 Rates verified — Official sources: Service Canada — OAS pension recovery tax · Service Canada — OAS payment amounts · Service Canada — Do you qualify
⚠️ This is general information, not financial, tax or legal advice. KnowMyGovt is an independent service with no affiliation with or endorsement by Service Canada, the Canada Revenue Agency or the Government of Canada, and is not responsible for decisions you make based on it.
