With tax season well underway, you may be considering contributing to an IRA. For many people, the IRA options are confusing. There are traditional IRAs, Roth IRAs, SEP IRAs, and SIMPLE IRAs. Which IRA is right for you? Well, if you are not an employer and are not self-employed, you may not decide on your own to contribute to a SIMPLE or SEP IRA. That leaves traditional and Roth IRAs. Which is best for your retirement savings needs? We examine your options.
On Tuesday, February 9, 2016, President Obama released his Fiscal Year 2017 Budget – his final budget proposal as President of the United States. Having seen none of his 14 retirement account-related proposals from last year’s budget enacted, the President has included them all again in this year’s budget. In addition, this year’s budget features one additional significant retirement account-related change. In this article, you will find a complete list of the 15 provisions in the President’s budget that directly relate to retirement accounts. For each, you’ll see whether they are new or carryovers from previous years, a description of each, as well as some commentary to provide insight and perspective.
It generally takes about 30 seconds to complete a beneficiary form, and that is about all the consideration that is given to the document. Do you realize that the beneficiary form determines who will receive what could be a significant portion of your estate? Learn more about the beneficiary form's power in today's blog post.
Did you take your RMD from your IRA for 2015? Hopefully, the answer is yes because for most IRA owners and beneficiaries the deadline for taking a 2015 RMD was December 31, 2015. There is an exception. If you reached age 70 ½ in 2015, you still have time. Your deadline for taking your 2015 RMD from your IRA is April 1, 2016. However, if you missed your 2015 RMD, stay calm and follow these three steps.
I've received several questions about these two popular planning strategies, and whether it was too late to incorporate them when you sit down with your CPA. The short answer is yes, the ship has sailed. And here's why.
Tax season is here. This is the time when many IRA owners consider making contributions for the prior year. Are you planning on making a 2015 contribution to your IRA? Here are 10 IRA contribution rules you need to know.
The Roth IRA is one of the most useful tools in the retirement planning bag of tricks. But just as the quality of any tools at your local hardware store might vary from shelf to shelf, so too do the qualities of Roth IRA conversions you might execute. There’s nothing wrong, per se, with a “plain vanilla” conversion, but this article delves into a conversion strategy you might want to look into during stock market volatility: Roth-conversion-cost averaging.
Here are four details you need to know about IRA-to-Roth IRA conversions and the pro-rata rule. The pro-rata rule also applies to employer plan retirement plan distributions, but it is applied differently.
If you are required to take an RMD (required minimum distribution) from your IRA for 2016, your IRA custodian is required to send an RMD statement to you by January 31, 2016. Here are seven things you need to know about this important information, which will be arriving in your mail sometime in the next few weeks.
What kind of nightmarish world would we be living in where prices would go up 2,000% overnight? A world where gas today is $1.50 per gallon, but tomorrow it will cost you $30 for the same gallon. Thankfully, such increases are all but unheard of in the real world. At least that’s the case most of the time. Effective February 1, 2016, the IRS is raising the cost of some IRA (and other retirement account) related private letter rulings (PLRs) by as much as 2,000%... overnight! Here’s the deal.
