I was recently in touch with Canada Revenue Agency for some info on making withdrawals. I was told that if I made only the minimum withdrawal, no income tax would apply.  This is quite different from not having witholding tax applied, which is what she should have said.  Obviously her info was flawed.  When this kind of misinfo comes from a representative of the CRA, it would be easy to be misled and be unpleasantly surprised when you get the tax bill. Just be careful, even if you're getting info from an official source.