April 16th is here. The blossoms are budding on the trees, the birds are beginning to chirp and, of course, CPAs and tax preparers everywhere are coming out of a 2 ½ month hibernation. Tax season is officially over. With that in mind, taxes may be the last thing you want to talk about right now, but with the sting of this year’s tax season still fresh, now’s the time to start thinking about a few easy steps to help make next year’s tax season a little less... well… taxing! Here are three such steps you might want to consider.
If you're lucky enough to be getting an income tax refund from IRS for 2013, you might be wondering what you can do with that money. Certainly you can use it to pay some bills, or treat yourself to something you've wanted to buy for a while. But if you're thinking about using that refund to help save for retirement, you're in luck. The IRS allows you to have that refund check directly deposited into an IRA if you follow certain procedures when you file your federal income taxes for 2013.
How do I tell IRS that my IRA distribution or Roth conversion is not taxable? We get this question fairly frequently at tax time - especially if the client has done a "backdoor" Roth conversion. Click to find the answer and more information on After-Tax IRA Contributions, Distributions, and Conversions at tax time.
This week's
Slott Report Mailbag focuses on a SEP IRA conversion to a Roth IRA. It's an interesting question (one we don't get often), so we decided to put a spotlight on the issue in this week's mailbag. Click to read a Q&A with our IRA Technical Expert.
Prohibited transactions are a list of things that you cannot do with your retirement account. In fact, they are one of the worst things you can do with a retirement account. When a prohibited transaction occurs, your entire IRA is deemed distributed as of January 1 of the year you made the prohibited transaction. This can lead to any number of negative consequences, the least of which include massive taxation and penalties. Since the prohibited transaction rules are so important, the basic information can be readily found in IRS publications and other places on the web, but here are 3 things most people don’t know about them.
As we approach the April 15, 2014 tax filing deadline, one of the things you have to report on your tax return is an IRA-to-IRA rollover. Whether you’ve already filed your taxes for 2013 or you’re waiting until the last minute, here is how to correctly report a tax-free IRA-to-IRA rollover. Don’t assume that because an IRA-to-IRA rollover is tax-free that it doesn’t need to be reported on your tax return; it has to be reported!
In a recent 60-day rollover private letter ruling request, an individual was allowed to complete a rollover of only a portion of his IRA distribution. Click to find out what happened.
You can't just contribute to an IRA if you have extra money lying around and don't work. It's a fact that many Americans aren't aware of, and it's one that came up in this week's
Slott Report Mailbag. We also examine the ability to recharacterize part of a Roth conversion more than once and the process for establishing IRA annuities.
As we enter April 2014, many of you are having your taxes prepared for 2013. Maybe you're having your taxes done by a professional tax-preparer such as a CPA or other professional, or maybe you’re doing it yourself - hello Turbo Tax! Click to learn how to avoid a 50% penalty on your RMD.
If someone who turned age 70 1/2 did NOT take their first mandatory required minimum distribution (RMD) last year, they MUST take it by today (April 1) as well as their 2014 RMD by year end. Levine discusses the nuts and bolts of what you need to know in the video below.
