The Slott Report

Contributing to a retirement account EARLY in your life and EARLY in the year can pay big dividends over the long run. How? We explain below.

The first Slott Report Mailbag of 2014 involves several topics we go into detail on at our 2-Day IRA Workshop. Spousal waivers, the 60-day IRA rollover window and required minimum distributions are the topics of the day, and our team of IRA Experts answered each below.

An IRA account owner or beneficiary died and there was no named beneficiary for the account. The obvious question comes, "Who inherits the account and how do you calculate the required distribution?" Click to find the answer.

The holidays are over. New Years has come and gone. Now, of course, it's time to get ready for - cue the Andy Williams' music - "the most wonderful time of the year." Tax time! Here we give 3 tips to help you prepare.

As we begin 2014, many of you who are charitably inclined have asked us about the status of QCDs (qualified charitable distributions). QCDs, known as charitable IRA rollovers, are a way of moving your IRA money tax-free to a charity.

2014 is almost here, but we wanted to open the Slott Report Mailbag one last time to answer some pressing year-end retirement planning questions, as well as several issues with decisions that will come in the new year. Click to read this week's Q&A with our IRA Technical Expert.

It is year-end. Retirement account owners and beneficiaries are grappling with required distributions for 2013 and, in some cases, with missed distributions from prior years. When there is a missed distribution, we constantly get the question, “Do I have to do an amended tax return?” The answer is, “No.”Distributions from retirement accounts are taxable to the recipient in the year in which the funds come out of the account. Read more for some examples.

"Don't Let the IRS Gobble Up Your IRA," yet if you listen to the national newspaper article we read yesterday, that's exactly what the IRS will do. This article's author makes major mistakes, using the wrong IRA minimum distribution table in his example, using the wrong percentage when talking about required distributions from your IRA balance and more.

IRS Private Letter Ruling 201342017 is a ruling that involved a Ponzi scheme in an IRA. An IRA owner we will call "Alex" asserted that his failure to complete his IRA rollover within the 60-day rollover window was because his financial adviser engaged in a Ponzi scheme.

Ed Slott and Company IRA Technical Consultant Jeffrey Levine lays out 3 different ways you can give to charity in 2013, how charitable giving can help you at tax time and key strategies to take advantage of before the end of the year. It's December, so with that in mind, we lay out 3 ways you can give to charity in 2013.