This week, Ed and I (Jeffrey Levine) are in Las Vegas for the first ever AICPA Engage Conference. Engage has taken some of the biggest (and in my humble opinion, best) AICPA conferences, such as the Advanced Personal Financial Planning Conference and the Advanced Estate Planning Conference, and merged them into one giant conference.
Catch-up contributions for most retirement plans and IRAs can be made beginning in the year you are going to turn age 50. The only plan that does not allow catch-up contributions is the SEP IRA. The following are the catch-up limit amounts.
Roth 401(k)s and Roth IRAs have a lot in common. Both offer the ability to make after-tax contributions now in exchange for tax-free earnings down the road if the rules are followed. However, there are some important differences between the two plans that you will want to understand.
If you want to move your retirement account from one institution to another, you can do it one of two ways; directly or indirectly. Moving your account directly is the preferred way because it avoids a lot of headaches, but for various reasons, sometimes people choose to use the indirect method.
We received many questions this past tax season about Roth IRA conversions that were supposed to be tax-free, but were not.
On April 13, President Trump signed into law legislation that blocked Obama-era Department of Labor (DOL) regulations encouraging the establishment of IRA plans run by cities and municipalities. On May 17, he signed similar legislation applying to state-run IRAs. While these new developments may make the road ahead for both city and state run IRA plans more difficult, these plans are not going away.
The long-running saga of the Department of Labor (DOL) fiduciary rule took another turn on May 22 when Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta confirmed that there would be no delay in the June 9, 2017, implementation date. Mr. Acosta said that after careful consideration, there was no legal basis to extend the deadline.
It sounds funny to say, but death is a part of life for all of us. It’s one of the few things that all of us have in common at some point, and it’s one of the few issues that must be addressed in every plan. While every situation is unique and we all have our own goals and objectives, the overwhelming majority of married couples with IRAs and other similar accounts, such as 401(k)s and 403(b)s, name their spouse as their primary beneficiary as part of their estate plans. As such, knowing the rules for when a spouse inherits an IRA is critical for just about every married couple.
Hopefully, by now everyone has heard that IRA owners can only do one IRA-to-IRA or Roth IRA-to-Roth IRA 60-day rollover in any one-year period. This interpretation of the 60-day rollover rules was part of a 2014 Tax Court decision (Bobrow v. Commissioner, T.C.Memo. 2014-21). What was unclear from this ruling and from subsequent IRS guidance was whether or not the rule applied to a surviving spouse who inherited multiple IRAs from a deceased spouse.
You have done the right thing for years. You have diligently saved and accumulated funds in your IRA. At some point, the funds that you have put away for years must come out. Uncle Sam wants his share. When you reach age 70 ½, you must take a required minimum distribution (RMD) for that year and for every year thereafter.
