Ed Slott and Company IRA Technical Consultant Jeffrey Levine details three main 2013 tax and revenue raising provisions to keep your eye on and plan for as summer flies by (we are nearly three-fourths of the way through the calendar year!) One of those provisions is a surtax on net investment income brought on by President Obama's health care law.
Ed Slott, named “The Best Source for IRA Advice” by The Wall Street Journal, is now a featured blogger for the national website, www.RetireUSA.net and its popular blog (http://retireusa.net/blog). Based in Ashland, Oregon and launched earlier this year, the fast-growing website and blog were created to serve the needs of 79 million baby-boomers exploring ways to live a successful retirement.
Can you put your IRA into your trust? NO Can you transfer it to your spouse? NO. We explain why below.
Today is a very special day here at the Slott Report. Why is that, you ask? Well, today is the start of a brand new feature here at the blog called "5 Quick Questions." From time to time you will see new 5 Quick Questions on all sorts of IRA and retirement account related topics.
A recent report released by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College shows that Social Security is one of, if not the cheapest annuities available (click here to see the report). "Well that doesn't make much sense" you might be saying to yourself. After all, you don’t "buy" your Social Security annuity payments right? You're simply entitled to receive them after meeting certain requirements.
The law allows you to leave money and property to a beneficiary after your death. Generally, the beneficiary must be a person or legal entity capable of accepting the property. Individuals almost always name a beneficiary of their IRA who will inherit the funds after their death. Usually the IRA beneficiary is a person such as a spouse, child, or grandchild. But IRA owners can name a legal entity as their IRA beneficiary, such as a charity, estate, or trust.
We received an IRA mailbag question from Greg, who wanted to know if he could consolidate all of his separate converted Roth IRA funds into one account. Two important factors to answer this question are: 1) how long have the converted funds been in the Roth IRA? 2) how old is Greg?
Happy Friday! So, let's say you are leaving or have left your employer. What happens to your retirement plan funds? There are options other than taking a taxable distribution of your retirement account balance.
An employer retirement plan, such as 401(k) plan may provide for hardship distributions. A hardship distribution must be for an immediate and heavy financial need of the employee, his spouse, or dependent. Hardship distributions are generally taxable and cannot be rolled over to an IRA or other retirement plan. They are also subject to the 10% early distribution penalty (unless an exception applies).
This IRAtv video from Ed Slott is about a recent Wall Street Journal article on the up-and-down value of gold and how you can recharacterize a Roth IRA conversion if the value of your investments go down. Ed breaks down the recharacterization process and uses gold as an example on the Roth recharacterization decision each investor must make with devalued investments.
