The IRS takes 15% of your US dividends in a TFSA and nothing in an RRSP. That’s one rule. There are dozens — and a quality-investing desk that knows every one of them.
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Most investing tools are built for traders.
The rest are built for Americans.
So a Canadian who wants to own good companies for a decade gets a flashing ticker tape from one and a 401(k) calculator from the other. Neither knows what a TFSA is. Neither has heard of the superficial loss rule. Neither will ever mention that your US dividends are being taxed twice.
CompoundWise is the third thing.
Your US dividends are being taxed in a country you don’t live in.
The IRS withholds 15% of every US dividend before it reaches you. Hold those shares in an RRSP and the Canada–US treaty makes that zero. Hold them in a TFSA and it is gone — withheld, and with no Canadian tax on the income, there is nothing to claim a credit against.
Same shares. Same company. Same you. Different account.
because withheld dollars don’t compound either
Assumes a flat 15% treaty withholding rate, dividends paid evenly across the year, and that the withheld dollars would otherwise have compounded at 7% a year for 20 years. It illustrates one rule in isolation — an FHSA behaves like the TFSA here, and a non-registered account is withheld too but generally recoverable through the foreign tax credit. Your real numbers depend on your holdings; the app computes this per position from your actual ledger, not from a slider.
CompoundWise finds every position this applies to, tells you which account it belongs in, and scores how well your whole portfolio is placed — out of 100.
Want it run against your actual holdings?
CompoundWise is in private beta and free while it is.
Are you actually beating the index — or just feeling like it?
CompoundWise replays every buy and sell you ever made, dollar-for-dollar, on the same dates, into your policy mix, XEQT or SPY. The twin’s value today against yours is how far ahead of or behind the index you are — a gap, not a measure of skill. No estimates. No AI. Just your own ledger, run twice.
Three lenses, because one is misleading: your money-weighted return (what your dollars actually earned), the benchmark twin (the dollar gap), and a time-weighted curve with deposit timing stripped out. The scope is printed on the panel — holdings only, dividends reinvested in the index on both sides, the same rule applied to both.
Sometimes the honest answer is that the index won. You should be told.
Example portfolio · illustrative figures, not a result
The twin is ahead by $4,120. That is how far behind simply buying the index you are — the gap, not a measure of skill.
Nothing needs you. It says so.
No wall of flashing tickers. One ranked list of the few decisions that actually need a human — fused from the signal engine, the tax audit, your goals and your concentration limits. When the list is empty, the ring is calm and green, and you close the tab.
Every card has an Act button that deep-links into the pre-filled trade, the Tax Centre or the rebalance plan. No hunting.
One rule firing on five holdings is one card naming all five — a list of decisions, not an echo.
Dismiss is a 30-day snooze, not a mute so a SELL you waved off that still fires next month comes back.
Three decisions are waiting.
76% of your money is in US dollars and the loonie is firming — every 1% CAD rise trims about $1,125 of your value.
US dividends are losing 15% to IRS withholding here. An RRSP is treaty-exempt.
Trim ~20% — sell ~15 shares (~C$4,100) → ~7.2% weight.
Harvestable loss of $610. Safe to sell today; repurchase blocked until 12 Oct.
Example cards · illustrative figures. Buy, sell and trim cards come from the rule engine, never from AI. Structural suggestions from your AI tax audit are labelled as such.
Built for the country you actually file in.
Same shares. Different account.Move it once. Keep it forever.
The withheld dividends, and the compounding they never got to do.
Assumes $375 of US dividends withheld a year at the 15% treaty rate, compounding at 7%. The app computes this from your own positions, not from an example.
Not a US product with a currency toggle. A Canadian tax engine, with the CRA rates and limits kept by tax year in one config file — so when a threshold moves, one number moves, and everything downstream moves with it.
Move a holding. Watch what it costs.
Withheld at 15% and unrecoverable — no Canadian tax on the income to credit it against.
Maximum upside sheltered permanently, and no dividend means no withholding to waste.
The eligible dividend tax credit only exists here. Anywhere else it is thrown away.
Illustrative scores on three representative holdings. The ordering is the real rule; the app scores every position you actually own, against the account it is actually in.
Will the money last? One honest answer.
The owner’s edgeTime is the machine. Own quality for a decade and let it work. Keep scrolling.
Same decade. The difference is whether you were an owner or a tourist.
Illustrative, not a forecast or a result: C$10,000 compounded for 10 years at 6.44% a year — the equity return the retirement planner assumes (FP Canada 2026 guidelines: 4.25% real plus 2.1% inflation), gross of fees and before tax. The flat line is a picture, not a measurement.
Opinions are cheap. These are computed.
Four engines run nightly across the whole universe. None of them is an AI guessing — every number has a formula behind it, and every formula is locked by tests that run on each change.
High marks on the three quality pillars and a fair — not cheap — price. The sizing rule puts this in the top conviction band.
Suggested weight: 8–12% of the portfolio
In a test on US filers 2009–2022, the fundamentals behind the score (85 of its 100 points) ranked the next three years’ peer-relative returns modestly well; its valuation inputs, label cut-offs, Canadian listings and sizing bands are untested.
AI that answers from your numbers.
“What should I do with my Shopify position?”
It is rated HOLD.
↳ Source: Signals
The business has not deteriorated, so nothing here says sell — a SELL from this engine means the fundamentals broke, never that the price moved.
It is 14% above the blended fair value, which is rich rather than wrong.
↳ Source: Fair value
Your cost base is $8,410, so trimming would realise a gain you do not have to take this year.
↳ Source: Cost base
It sits in your TFSA, which is where it should be: no dividend to withhold.
↳ Source: This holding
An example answer. The model wrote the sentences; the engines produced every number in them.
A macro-aware read on every holding you own.
Sample report on an example portfolio. Runs instantly and costs nothing.
In the app this reads your own holdings against the market regime — classified from five inputs: VIX, the US 10- and 2-year yields, the high-yield credit spread and the S&P 500 against its 200-day average — and returns a ranked plan. Press Generate to see the shape of one.
One set of engines.
Every screen you own.
The apps do not recompute anything. They read the same server, the same engines, the same ledger — so the figure on your Lock Screen and the figure on your laptop cannot drift apart.
Web
The full desk — screener, dossiers, portfolio, tax centre, advisor. Available now.
iPhone
A native app with your whole portfolio in it, Face ID, and charts you can pinch. Coming soon.
Android
The same app, built natively for Android. Coming soon.
Widgets
Total value and a goal ring on your Home and Lock Screen. Coming with the phone apps.
Live Activity
A “markets open” session in the Dynamic Island while they are. Coming with the phone apps.
Alerts
Price targets, thesis breaches, and earnings the evening before — to Telegram today, to push with the apps.
You already use something. Here’s what it can’t say.
Each of these is genuinely good at its job. None of them is built for a Canadian trying to own good businesses for a decade.
A spreadsheet
Perfect memory. Total control.
It does not know that your US dividends are being withheld, or that selling this month denies the loss.
A US stock screener
Deep fundamentals, fast filters.
It has never heard of a TFSA. Every tax answer it gives you is for a country you do not file in.
A robo-advisor
Cheap, automatic, diversified.
It picks the portfolio for you and will not tell you which account to hold it in, or how your own picks did against the index.
Your brokerage
The real balances, in real time.
It shows you what you own. It has no opinion on whether you should, and no view of your other accounts.
Built by someone who files the same return you do.
CompoundWise started as one Canadian investor’s own portfolio tooling. Every rule in it exists because it was needed first-hand, not because it looked good on a roadmap.
It can never place a trade
Broker connections are read-only, and revocable whenever you like. The app can read what you hold. It cannot buy, sell, or move a dollar — not on your instruction, and not on its own.
Nothing is written without you pressing Confirm
Even the AI can only draft. A drafted trade takes the identical path as one you typed yourself, and it waits for you.
Your numbers stay yours
The page you are reading sets no cookies and runs no third-party trackers. Inside the app, your data is used to answer your questions — not sold, and not used to train anybody's model.
Anyone can show you a chart.
Fewer will show you the method.
Every formula in the app is written down — what it computes, the exact expression, a worked example, and how it is validated. No account needed to read it.
Golden tests on every money formula
ACB, capital gains, withholding, contribution room, the retirement simulator, the benchmark twin — each locked against hand-computed answers, with adversarial data: splits, currency conversions, oversells.
CRA constants in one config, by tax year
Brackets, inclusion rates, thresholds and contribution limits live in one config file, keyed by the tax year they apply to; source notes cover the brackets and some other sections, not yet every number. When a tax year changes, the config changes, not the code.
Scope printed on the panel
The performance twin discloses that it is holdings-only and that dividends are treated the same on both sides — reinvested in the index from the day they were paid. The asset mix discloses what it had to assume was equity.
Deterministic by design
The retirement simulation uses a fixed seed, so the same inputs always give the same odds. The 27 rules have no randomness and show which conditions fired.
CompoundWise is research software, not a registered adviser. Scores, fair values, labels including “Buy” and “Sell”, AI output and tax figures are informational signals and estimates — not investment, tax or legal advice. Every decision is yours, and the app never places a trade.
Compounding is easy.
Keeping it isn’t.
CompoundWise is in private beta and free while it is. Leave your address and we’ll send you an invite when a place opens.
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