Beyond, TFSA allows for the transfer of equities into the account. You do not have to sell and then re-buy.

As has been pointed out, you can pick the beginning or closing price on the day the stock is put in the account. This creates the opportunity of putting substantial more than the 5k max contribution. If your current trading account is full of small cap disasters, wait until one of them has a nice pop off the bottom sometime this year and put it in the TFSA at the opening price. Then sell it the next day and you have a much larger than 5k contribution. For instance, you have a 2 cent stock, it pops one day to 4 cents. You put it in the TFSA at the opening price of 2 cents, sell it at 4cents the next day, and you have 10k in your TFSA tax free to invest. Essentially you doubled your TFSA doing nothing. This gives you a huge head start given this is a tax free compounding account. (and you can do this every year)

6180, one problem that could be encountered in this scenario is the fact that you would negate a potential capital loss if needed against some gains -- am I right? Anybody know the rules relating to this? I'm assuming the CRA wouldn't be that generous.

Okay, you guys that are saying that you can transfer shares as opposed to cash into the TFSA -- are you dealing with full service brokers? I'm assuming that it isn't possible with the discounts or rather it is just a huge headache.