The Slott Report

This week's Slott Report Mailbag answers reader questions about delaying RMDs from an employer plan and IRA rollovers.

In 2014, the Tax Court ruled that an IRA owner could do only one, IRA-to-IRA or Roth IRA-to-Roth IRA, 60-day rollover in a 12 month period. This rule applies no matter how many IRA and/or Roth IRA accounts the IRA owner might have. The 12 months is a full 12 months, not a calendar year. The 12 month period will start with the date that IRA or Roth IRA funds are received.

If you have an IRA, you should realize that what goes in must come out. In other words, your tax deferral will not last forever. Eventually, Uncle Sam will want his share. When you reach retirement age, required minimum distributions (RMDs) will kick in. Are you prepared? Take our RMD quiz and see how well you understand the basic RMD rules.

If you have a 401(k) account or other employer sponsored retirement plan, you probably already know that a distribution before you reach age 59½ is going to be subject to a 10% penalty. One exception to the 10% early withdrawal penalty allows participants in a qualified plan to take a distribution from the plan after leaving the job as long as they are age 55 or older. This rule, sometimes called “The Rule of 55,” is an exception to the early withdrawal rules that generally levy a 10% penalty on amounts withdrawn before age 59 ½. This exception does not apply to IRA distributions.

Roth IRAs become 20 years old in January of 2018 and now hold more than $660 billion in retirement wealth, reports the Investment Company Institute. Yet while Roth IRAs have become very popular among individuals who make annual contributions to IRAs, they are near totally avoided by persons who roll over big-dollar distributions from company retirement plans into their IRAs, with these funds going overwhelmingly into Traditional IRAs.

This week's Slott Report Mailbag looks into the still-working exception and RMDs.

While there is a lot of focus on the proposed tax law changes that have a target effective date of 2018, there is something we can count on for 2018, the inflation adjusted retirement account limits. There are currently no proposed changes to the following limits.

House Republicans took the first shot at tax reform with the release of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act on November 2. Now it is the Senate’s turn to weigh in. Not surprisingly, the Senate’s take on overhauling the tax code looks very different than the House version. You may wonder how your retirement account may be affected. Here are some highlights.

This week's Slott Report Mailbag examines inherited IRAs and retirees taking RMDs for the first time.

We continuously get questions on 60-day rollovers. Many times those questions revolve around a client receiving more than one distribution or wanting to complete the 60-day rollover with more than one distribution. Here is what you need to know.