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In this month's Ruling to Remember, we look at Private Letter Ruling 201339002, wherein a Taxpayer we will call Sue claimed that her old financial institution never adequately explained the 60-day rollover rule, costing her the ability to roll an IRA distribution over to a new IRA at a new financial institution.

This week's Slott Report Mailbag gets into the Roth IRA 5-year rules - as well as the once-per-year-rollover-rule and disclaimer planning. These topics showcase the depth of IRA distribution and retirement planning and the intricacies, detail and potential danger involved in this area.

With Veteran's Day quickly approaching, Ed Slott and Company IRA Technical Consultant Jeffrey Levine detailed 3 retirement-related tax breaks members of the United States armed forces can take advantage of before year-end.

When you first open an IRA with a financial institution (custodian), you have to sign the custodian's IRA contract. This IRA contract must contain an IRA agreement and an accompanying disclosure statement. Usually both these documents are contained in one IRA contract, with the disclosure statement attached right behind the IRA agreement.

Many of the retirement plan annual limits are indexed for inflation. IRS has just released the plan limits for 2014. We look at those limits in some detail below.

Most of us know about the 10% early distribution penalty, and still many of us know there are certain ways to avoid it. One of those ways is the "age 55 exception." We look at the "age 55 exception" FAQs in the question-and-answer segment below.

You are allowed to buy life insurance inside your employer retirement plan, such as a 401(k) or profit sharing plan. While many plans don't offer life insurance as an investment, some in fact do. Click to find out more.

If you put money into an IRA or Roth IRA earlier this year for 2013 or plan to do so before the April 15, 2014 contribution deadline, it’s important to double check and make sure you are actually able to do so. Any amount you contribute to an IRA/Roth IRA that isn’t allowed to be there will cost you a 6% penalty if it is not timely removed by October 15, 2014. Worse yet, that 6% penalty is not a one-time penalty. Every year the errant contribution remains in the account, the 6% penalty is assessed.

The IRS released the 2013 version of IRS Form 8880, Credit for Qualified Retirement Savings Contributions. The form is used to claim a federal income tax credit, known as the “saver’s credit,” if you make IRA contributions or certain salary deferral contributions to your company’s retirement plan, such as a 401(k) plan. Click to find out the criteria needed for receiving this credit.

In the current issue of its newsletter, Employee Plans News (Issue 2013-3, September 13, 2013), IRS has an article on one of the differences between divorce and legal separation as it impacts employer retirement plan rules.