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After Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria in 2017, Congress passed special legislation allowing expanded access to retirement plan funds for individuals affected by those storms.

SIMPLE IRAs are popular retirement vehicles for small businesses. They are relatively cheap to adopt and are easy to understand and administer. However, that doesn’t mean problems do not arise.

Hi Mr. Slott,I have been to several of your IRA continuing workshops over the years. Today I had someone in my office that stated they have not taken the rmd from an inherited IRA for 9 years. Whats your advice in this situation. Thank you for you help in this matter.

IRA owners can clearly combine the accounts they own and they can combine the required minimum distributions (RMDs) from multiple IRAs and take them from any one or combination of their IRAs. But what are the rules for inherited IRAs?

Legal training is less about memorization and more about understanding how to break down complex problems. With that mind, I often suggest that people understand the law and not try to memorize it.

I just had a call from an advisor with a “complicated” scenario. “Ralph” died and left his IRA to his spouse “Alice.” Ralph was 62 in the year he died.

Generally, taking distributions from an IRA or qualified plan before retirement age should be a last resort. Of course, life has its unexpected pitfalls and at times, earlier access to these funds is necessary.

Qualified plans are required to provide participants with a number of notices and information. There’s the Summary Plan Description, the Summary Annual Report, annual safe harbor notices (if applicable), plan account statements (either quarterly or annually), and the Special Tax Notice for distributions.

After last year’s passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which overhauled the tax code, you might think Congress would be done with tax legislation for a while. That is not the case.

We constantly see questions regarding the distribution rules for Roth IRAs. Personally, I’ve always thought that the failure to understand these rules prevents many from truly appreciating the benefits of these accounts.