Tax deductions on contributions to registered savings vehicles are a common policy tool used by governments in many industrialized countries to encourage people to save for retirement. However, these plans do not typically lock in funds, which means savers may also withdraw before retirement when their marginal tax rates are still high and forgo the tax benefit. In this paper, we investigate the extent to which pre-retirement savings withdrawals respond to changes in the net-of-tax benefit of withdrawing and whether such behavior depends on the saver’s financial literacy. To that end, we link respondents of a nationally representative financial capability survey from Canada to over 15 years of administrative tax data. Our results show that the correlation between savings withdrawals and the effective marginal tax rate is negative for those with higher financial literacy, but much weaker and sometimes statistically insignificant for those with lower financial literacy. The findings suggest that financial literacy is an important determinant of the extent to which tax-deductible savings plans are used efficiently.

对注册储蓄工具的缴款减税是许多工业化国家政府鼓励人们为退休储蓄的常用政策工具。然而，这些计划通常不会锁定资金，这意味着当边际税率仍然很高时，储户也可能在退休前提款并放弃税收优惠。在本文中，我们调查了退休前储蓄提款对提款的税后净收益变化的反应程度，以及这种行为是否取决于储户的金融知识。为此，我们将加拿大具有全国代表性的财务能力调查的受访者与超过 15 年的行政税收数据联系起来。我们的结果表明，储蓄提款与有效边际税率之间的相关性对于金融素养较高的人来说是负相关，但对于金融素养较低的人来说，这种关系要弱得多，有时甚至在统计上不显着。调查结果表明，金融知识是有效使用免税储蓄计划程度的重要决定因素。