Year-end retirement planning is in full swing. We are less than a week away from Christmas and in two short weeks 2013 will be here. Financial advisors and their clients are working hard to develop a proactive plan to guard against rising taxes. Ed Slott has your answers on gifting, RMDs (required minimum distributions) and QCDs (qualified charitable distributions) in three year-end planning videos found below.
A misconception we see frequently is individuals thinking they have until April 15th to do a Roth conversion for the prior year. The Roth conversion rules are not the same as the Roth IRA contribution rules. We explain the difference below.
If you are thinking about going back to school but don't have the money, you can potentially use your IRA to pay for higher education expenses. Unfortunately, the distribution from your Traditional IRA will be taxable.
The end of the year is rapidly approaching. It is time to make sure that all required distributions are taken from retirement accounts. Who must take a required distribution? We explain below.
The holiday season is upon us once again. There are a lot of things we associate with this time of year, but one of the most common has to be exchanging gifts with those we love. I can remember, as a child, writing out my wish list each year and the excitement I’d have wondering which gifts I might actually receive. Recalling those days I thought I would once again prepare a wish list, but with a little twist. Below you will find my holiday wish list to Congress and the IRS for changes I’d like to see made to the tax code.
Many areas in the Northeast were declared federal disaster areas as a result of Hurricane Sandy. The IRS has provided help for the victims of Hurricane Sandy. Some of the retirement plan initiatives the IRS has announced are explained below.
Thanksgiving is here - and the end of 2012 (believe it or not) is right around the corner. That means "year-end planning" time, and below we offer 3 questions you should ask (and find answers to) before year-end.
It is vital that IRA owners name both primary and contingent beneficiaries. Failure to have a beneficiary in place at death could result in the loss of the extended payout, that is, the stretch IRA. Why? If the IRA owner’s beneficiary dies before the IRA owner and no contingent beneficiary was ever named, the IRA owner’s estate is usually the default beneficiary. The estate does not have a life expectancy to use for stretch distributions.
A required minimum distribution (RMD) is not eligible for rollover. In an IRA, what this means is that when you have a required distribution for the year and you take a distribution payable to yourself, only the amount over and above the RMD amount can be put back into another IRA. This is true even if you take the distribution in January and you were planning on taking your RMD in December.
This week's Slott Report Mailbag covers some common questions we receive each week. One question deals with the date of a person's first required minimum distribution (RMD), another with a family member using their IRA to purchase their son's mortgage and a third on combining an inherited IRA with an individual's own IRA.
