Someone with more of a clue than me please confirm?"

Hey Twilight. I am not an accountant, but I have looked into this in depth over the last year and dealt with it at the end of 2009. When you sell in your unsheltered and trigger a loss, you cannot buy those shares back IN ANY ACCOUNT (and neither can anyone else in your household) for 30 days otherwise that loss that you triggered becomes a superficial loss and gets rolled back into the average cost. When you buy those shares back (as you are suggesting) in a TFSA before the 30 days are up you lose the loss completely. The same goes for doing an in-kind transfer from an unsheltered account to a TFSA... if you have a gain you have to count it as a capital gain, however, if you have a loss you cannot claim it or roll it back in as a superficial loss.

Really, the only way to take advantage of the TFSA AND a capital loss is to sell your stock, wait 30 days and THEN buy the shares back in your TFSA. Of course this is only helpful when that stock is at the same price or lower after those 30 days.

A lot of people also forget that the 30 day rule applies to BOTH sides of the loss triggering sale. 30 days before AND 30 days after.

Hope this helps.

~andy