We are in Las Vegas this week for our 2-Day IRA Workshop. Of course, the mere mention of Las Vegas conjures images of big, lavish casinos, so that got us thinking. Are there parallels between your IRA and a casino? Sure there are some, but the reality is (as you might expect), there are some pretty big differences. Here are just three of them.
You can invest your IRA funds in just about anything. However, you’re not allowed to invest IRA funds in collectibles, life insurance, and S Corp stock; but other than that, almost everything else would be allowed. It’s important to understand that when we talk about investing your IRA funds, we’re talking about investments inside your IRA. Someone recently learned a hard lesson when he invested his IRA funds outside his IRA, which caused a taxable IRA distribution that the IRS wouldn’t allow him to fix.
You just hit the magical tax code age of 70 1/2 and decided it was time to move those employer plan retirement funds to an IRA. You must take your required minimum distribution from the plan first. What happens if you don't? IRA Technical Expert Beverly DeVeny outlines the consequences and how to correct them.
Last week,we detailed the 14 proposals in the President’s budget that, if implemented, would have a direct impact on retirement accounts. Since that time we/ve been flooded with questions and comments about the proposals, how they would work and what our feelings about them are. Here are Jeffrey Levine's responses to a handful of those inquiries.
The IRS limits how much you can contribute to an IRA each year, yet some IRA holders don't know about the IRA limits. What happened to a married couple when they exceeded them and failed to rectify the error?
Is your spouse really your spouse (for retirement plan purposes)? We go through several court cases that illustrate how things may not seem as they appear when it comes to your "wives" and retirement plan beneficiaries.
On Monday, February 2, 2015, President Obama’s Fiscal Year 2016 Budget was unveiled to the American public, along with the Department of Treasury’s Greenbook, which provides further explanation and details of the proposals in the President’s budget. In truth, the President’s budget is really more of a “wish-list” than anything else, but here's a good indication of where the administration is headed when it comes to retirement planning.
Most of us know to check our mail around this time of the year for our copies of IRS Form W-2, Wage and Tax Statement. Our employers have to send us copies of Form W-2 by January 31st of the following year. Because January 31, 2015 was a Saturday, the deadline to send us our 2014 Form W-2 was February 2, 2015. February 2 was also the deadline to receive another key form if you took an IRA distribution in 2014.
For anyone who did a Roth IRA conversion in 2010, you have now fulfilled the 5-year waiting period for taking penalty-free distributions from your 2010 Roth conversion. You have also passed one test for taking a qualified distribution. Here's what else you need to know about the Roth IRA 5-year clock.
Soon, you’ll be getting a copy of your 2014 IRS Form 1099-R if you took an IRA distribution last year. You will be sent a copy by Monday February 2, 2015. How do you decode your early IRA distributions on this form?
