What if you could avoid 100% of the income tax on your IRA? Or at least reduce the tax to as close to $0 as possible? While a totally tax-free IRA may seem like something that only exists in your dreams, there are some circumstances in which it may be possible. Here's how to make your IRA dreams come true.
If you are handling the affairs of an IRA owner who died last year, you need to be on the lookout for certain IRS reports that show IRA activity last year. Joe Cicchinelli walks you through the year-of-death reporting process.
Retirement plans are one area of the tax code where you may not be able to do everything the tax code says you can do. IRA custodians and employer plans can sometimes limit your options. One reason they might do this is to make it easier for them to manage and process your transactions. We detail a few examples of IRA custodians limiting your options.
If you participate in your employer’s SIMPLE (Savings Incentive Match Plan for Employees), you need to be aware of the “2-year rule” that applies when moving your SIMPLE IRA money to another IRA.
This week's Slott Report Mailbag looks at combining IRA monies into one big IRA, how 401(k)s affect calculating yearly IRA distributions and whether leaving equal IRA shares to your three children is possible. 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.
For IRA distribution purposes, all IRAs (except Roth IRAs) are considered one big giant IRA. It doesn’t matter if you have one IRA that was rolled over from a former employer, and one SEP IRA with your current employer, and one contributory IRA where you put annual contributions, and one after-tax IRA where you put contributions for which you do not take a deduction. All four IRAs will be considered one IRA any time you take a distribution.
When managing your retirement account, you should be aware of the unexpected ways those employer-sponsored or IRA accounts could actually COST you. Jeffrey Levine details 3 of those situations in the article below.
Many individuals are advised by their attorneys to set up a trust. There are a lot of good reasons to have a trust. But you really have to think twice before naming a trust as the beneficiary of an IRA. Read that sentence again – think twice before naming a trust as the beneficiary of an IRA. When that happens, who is the beneficiary of the IRA? Click to find out.
If you are on furlough thanks to the government shutdown and thinking about taking a distribution from your IRA, here are some things you need to know.
