One of the most common Roth IRA questions I'm asked is, "Should I make a Roth conversion?" While Roth conversions can make sense at any age, depending on your particular circumstances, generally speaking, the younger you are, the more it makes sense. In this article we go over 3 reasons to wait until you retire to make a Roth conversion.
April 16th is here. The blossoms are budding on the trees, the birds are beginning to chirp and, of course, CPAs and tax preparers everywhere are coming out of a 2 ½ month hibernation. Tax season is officially over. With that in mind, taxes may be the last thing you want to talk about right now, but with the sting of this year’s tax season still fresh, now’s the time to start thinking about a few easy steps to help make next year’s tax season a little less... well… taxing! Here are three such steps you might want to consider.
Prohibited transactions are a list of things that you cannot do with your retirement account. In fact, they are one of the worst things you can do with a retirement account. When a prohibited transaction occurs, your entire IRA is deemed distributed as of January 1 of the year you made the prohibited transaction. This can lead to any number of negative consequences, the least of which include massive taxation and penalties. Since the prohibited transaction rules are so important, the basic information can be readily found in IRS publications and other places on the web, but here are 3 things most people don’t know about them.
If someone who turned age 70 1/2 did NOT take their first mandatory required minimum distribution (RMD) last year, they MUST take it by today (April 1) as well as their 2014 RMD by year end. Levine discusses the nuts and bolts of what you need to know in the video below.
The 2014 tax season is quickly coming to a close and chances are you either have grumbled over your tax bill, or soon will. The question is, when you do that, should you be longing for “the good ol’ days” when taxes were lower, or should you be counting your blessings that you have today’s tax rates to contend with and not those of years’ past? In all likelihood, a little bit of both is true. Click to read about the history of income tax in America.
Have you ever been to the post office on April 15th? If not, I wouldn't recommend it. It's a zoo. Chances are that if you ever make such a trip, the lines will be long and the wait even longer. Why? Because all the last-minute procrastinators are there to send out their tax returns. Click to find out how to avoid this rush.
Roth IRAs have many rules and benefits, so boiling them all down to a list of just three isn't easy. Inevitably, there will be important information you should consider that's not on this list. That said, by simply knowing these three rules, you'll have a pretty good idea of whether or not you should be having the "Roth Talk." Click to learn about these three rules in detail.
Last Wednesday at The Slott Report, we released our analysis of the retirement provisions in the President’s 2015 fiscal year budget, breaking the news that, as part of that budget, Roth IRA owners would have RMDs during their lifetimes. Since that time, we’ve been hit with emails, calls and other inquiries about what, if anything, makes sense to do in light of that proposal. We give you our analysis below.
Yesterday, President Obama unveiled his Fiscal Year 2015 Budget. As has been the case with previous budgets, this year’s version includes a number of proposed changes aimed at retirement accounts. Six out of the 7 provisions detailed below, or similar versions of them, were included in President Obama’s Fiscal Year 2014 Budget last year.
When it comes to estate planning, one of the primary goals is to transfer as much of a person's assets to their intended beneficiaries at the lowest cost or, in other words, by paying the least amount of tax. Today, the federal estate tax exemption is $5,340,000 per person. It is also portable (can be transferred) between spouses, giving them a maximum exemption of $10,680,000 per couple and the maximum rate is 40%. That is a far cry from where we’ve been.
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