The 2012 tax law changes, passed by Congress after the fact in 2013, have necessitated some changes in forms used to file your 2012 taxes. IRS has just updated Form 8606, Nondeductible IRAs. This latest version is dated January 15, 2013.
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.
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.
Congress finally got around to passing tax legislation for 2012 with the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012. It revived qualified charitable distributions (QCDs) for two years – retroactively for 2012 and also for 2013. They had to tweak the rules, though, for 2012 since they did not renew the provision until 2013. What major tweak is in store?
Tick, tock, tick, tock. 2013 is almost here, and we at The Slott Report want to provide a few more important points to remember if you are still sorting through year-end retirement planning. These are the questions I am getting most frequently as we near the end of the year.
Most of the talk of the fiscal cliff focuses on the impending tax increases and budget cuts and the impact that they will have on businesses, governments, and, ultimately, on taxpayers. One of the ways that taxpayers will be affected is caused by the impact of the fiscal cliff on IRS.
A misconception we see frequently is individuals thinking they have until April 15th to do a Roth conversion for the prior year. The Roth conversion rules are not the same as the Roth IRA contribution rules. We explain the difference below.
The end of the year is rapidly approaching. It is time to make sure that all required distributions are taken from retirement accounts. Who must take a required distribution? We explain below.
A required minimum distribution (RMD) is not eligible for rollover. In an IRA, what this means is that when you have a required distribution for the year and you take a distribution payable to yourself, only the amount over and above the RMD amount can be put back into another IRA. This is true even if you take the distribution in January and you were planning on taking your RMD in December.
The unified gift and estate tax exemption is scheduled to drop from $5,120,000 to $1,000,000 as of January 1, 2013. This has prompted IRA account owners, and some advisors, to consider gifting retirement assets to children and grandchildren. For Roth IRA owners this would seem to be an especially attractive strategy. Who wouldn’t want to move an income-tax-free asset that has no step up in basis out of their estate to their beneficiaries?
