We have covered the new tax law (the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012) from both a retirement planning and tax planning standpoint since it was signed into law by President Barack Obama on January 2, 2013. We wrote a quick analysis of the law complete with a 5-plus-minute video on 5 key planning points. We followed with a detailed look at qualified charitable distributions (a topic we get frequent questions about), and how they were affected by the new law.
Now that 2012 has passed and you are starting to think about gathering the information to prepare your 2012 tax return, you may have noticed that you forgot to take your IRA required minimum distribution (RMD) for 2012.
If you wanted to have a 2012 Roth IRA conversion, the conversion funds had to leave your IRA account by December 31, 2012. They don’t have to be in the Roth IRA in 2012, they just need to be out of the IRA in 2012. You can take a distribution payable to yourself in November or December 2012 and within 60 days, sometime in January or February, roll over the funds to a Roth IRA. You can even take the funds from an IRA at financial institution A and roll them over to a Roth IRA at financial institution B.
You are still working. You want to convert some of your employer plan funds to a Roth IRA to follow Ed Slott's advice and begin years worth of tax-free saving. Can you? We examine the answer to that question and more in this week's Slott Report Mailbag.
As we reported earlier, the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 (ATRA) extended the qualified charitable distribution (QCD) rules retroactively for 2012 and through 2013. Two special rules allow IRA owners to have a donation made before February 1, 2013 be treated as a 2012 QCD. Click to learn more about the new IRS guidance on QCDs.
IRS released a revenue procedure (Rev. Proc. 2013-15) on Friday that set forth inflation adjusted items for 2013 and other items whose values for the coming year are specified in the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012. IRS welcomed the addition of the new 39.6% income tax bracket, the beginning income levels for the limitation on certain itemized deductions and the beginning income levels for the phaseout of personal exemptions.
As much as we like Roth conversions and encourage individuals to convert, we do realize that Roth conversions aren't for everyone. There have always been many factors to consider before doing a conversion. With the passage of the 2012 tax act on January 2, 2013 and with the healthcare surtaxes taking effect in 2013, there are now more factors to consider. We explain these below.
The questions are rolling in, as consumers are trying to make sense of the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012. Enjoy this week's Slott Report Mailbag!
On January 2, 2013 President Barack Obama signed the American Taxpayer Relief Act (ATRA) into law. Chances are this was pretty good news for you. Although the ATRA does create a new 39.6% tax bracket, this bracket is only expected to impact about 2% of all taxpayers. But just because your ordinary tax rate doesn’t increase in 2013 doesn’t mean you won’t pay more tax this year. In fact, most estimates show that anywhere between 75% and 80% of all taxpayers will pay more tax in 2013 than they did in 2012. Here’s a few reasons why that could be the case for you.
The rules for operating an employer retirement plan are complicated and mistakes are sometimes made. Recently, the IRS released Revenue Procedure 2013-12 with information that updates the Employee Plans Compliance Resolution System (EPCRS) for addressing various retirement plan compliance problems.
