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One 60-Day Rollover Per Year?

Find out how the one-rollover-per-year rule affects your IRA transactions. Learn about the regulations around IRA rollovers, including the one-rollover-per-year rule, and how to navigate these rules for effective financial planning.

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A Wish List for the IRS Beneficiary RMD Final Regulations

After more than two years, we might actually be getting answers from the IRS on several important unanswered questions concerning RMDs for those who inherit IRAs or company plan accounts. Learn about the upcoming IRS Beneficiary RMD Final Regulations, changes from the SECURE Act, and how they impact your retirement account inheritance planning.

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4 Ways to Reduce Your RMD Tax Bite

Discover four strategies to reduce your RMD tax bite and maximize your retirement savings. Learn about Qualified Charitable Distributions, the still-working exception, Qualified Longevity Annuity Contracts, and Roth IRA conversions.

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Tax Time for IRAs

IRAs are an important, but often overlooked, part of your overall tax planning. As the deadline for filing 2023 tax returns approaches, it is a good time to incorporate your IRA plan strategies with your overall tax plan.

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Backdoor Roth IRA Baggage

What is the Backdoor Roth strategy? High-income earners - those over the Roth IRA income threshold can make non-deductible contributions to a traditional IRA and then convert the traditional IRA to a Roth, thereby circumventing the income limitations.

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Time is Running Out for 2023 QCDs

If you are charitably inclined and have an IRA, you might want to consider doing a Qualified Charitable Distribution (QCD) for 2023. The deadline for a 2023 QCD is fast approaching. It is December 31, 2023, but many custodians have even earlier cutoffs.

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SECURE 2.0's Biggest Mess

Section 327 changes the distribution rules for spouse beneficiaries of IRA (and workplace plan) account holders and is effective January 1, 2024. The result is that some of these beneficiaries will actually be in a worse position than they are in under the current rules.

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Roth IRA Distribution Ordering Rules - Keep It Simple

When taking a distribution from a Roth IRA, this is the order in which the dollars come out, 1 through 3. You cannot access your converted dollars until the contributions have been depleted, and you cannot access any earnings until both the contributions and conversions are gone.

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Navigating QCDs in 5 Easy Steps

A QCD is a distribution from an IRA that goes directly to a qualifying charity and is not included in the taxable income of the IRA owner. A QCD cannot be made from an employer plan. A QCD can be up to $100,000 a year, per individual.

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Beware of Investing IRAs in NFTs

If you are thinking of buying an NFT (non-fungible token) with your IRA funds, you may want to reconsider. In Notice 2023-27, the IRS said that NFTs associated with “collectibles” are prohibited IRA investments. This could expose you to significant taxes and penalties.

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"Mid-Air" Roth Conversions

In the past, a person needed to route after- or pre-tax dollars through a traditional IRA, but this is no longer the case. With "Mid-Air" Roth Conversions, it can be done from company plans. Read more.

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5 Ways Excess IRA Contributions Happen

When a contribution is not permitted in an IRA, it is an excess contribution and needs to be fixed. Some excess contributions are pretty easy to understand. Others are a little more complicated. Here are 5 ways an excess IRA contribution can happen.

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IRA Beneficiary Payout Rules - The Madness Continues

The lunacy of IRA beneficiary payout rules continues to boggle the mind. As I guide advisors through the options available to their clients, various nuances present one unique scenario after another. Did the original IRA owner pass away before or after the establishment of the SECURE Act? How old was the person when they died? Who was the beneficiary? Is this a successor beneficiary situation? Ultimately, by following the individual fact patterns, definitive answers materialize.

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Anomalies and Exceptions

As already-complicated IRA rules spiral further into an abyss of confusion, it comes as no surprise that irregularities exist. Here are three such random anomalies and exceptions baked into the “arbitrary” lines of the tax code.

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Death of an IRA Beneficiary - Before Claiming the Account

If the original IRA owner named contingent beneficiaries on the beneficiary form, those names are null and void if the primary beneficiary is still alive when the owner dies. Assuming the primary beneficiary does not disclaim any portion of the IRA, the names on the contingent line become meaningless. The moment an IRA owner dies, the primary beneficiary is immediately deemed to be the new owner of those assets.

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Spousal Rollovers

The biggest advantage that a spouse beneficiary of an IRA has over other beneficiaries is the ability to do a spousal rollover. With this, inherited retirement account funds become the spouse beneficiary’s own.

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ALAR - The "At Least as Rapidly" Rule

This requirement of annual RMDs when an account owner dies on or after the RBD stems from a rule sometimes called the “at least as rapidly” (ALAR) rule. While the ALAR rule does not require the same amount that was taken by the IRA owner to also be taken by the beneficiary, it does require that the process of taking RMDs continue.

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Inherited Roth IRA: RMDs or No?

Owners of Roth IRAs are never required to take lifetime RMDs from their Roth IRA. Since lifetime RMDs are not applicable to Roth IRAs, all Roth IRA owners are deemed to have died before the RBD. Even if a Roth IRA owner died at age 100, he would be deemed to have died before his RBD.

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Poison Ivy: IRA Scenarios to Avoid

I thought about what might qualify as poison-ivy equivalents for IRAs. What transactions or situations present themselves as non-life-threatening nuisances that must be dealt with? Here are 4 pain-in-the-tail IRA annoyances.

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Conversion as a Gift to Your Beneficiaries

Do you have an IRA you are thinking about converting to a Roth IRA? Inheriting a traditional IRA will have very different tax consequences than inheriting a Roth IRA. Converting your IRA to a Roth IRA is really a gift to your beneficiaries.

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The 3 IRA Beneficiary Categories - Again and Again and Again

There are numerous articles referring to “eligible designated beneficiaries” (EDBs), “non-eligible designated beneficiaries” (NEDBs), and “non-designated beneficiaries” (NDBs). As a basic refresher, the three SECURE Act IRA beneficiary categories (and their applicable payout rules), are as follows.

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A Better Way of Understanding The Once-Per-Year Rollover Rule

The rule is often explained by saying that you can’t do more than one IRA-to-IRA (or Roth IRA-to-Roth IRA) rollover in any one-year (365-day) period. That’s an easy way of describing it, but it’s not always accurate. A better explanation is to say you can’t do a rollover of an IRA distribution made within one year of a prior distribution that you rolled over.

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How To Jump Into January with Smart IRA Moves as RMDs Return for 2021

Required minimum distributions (RMDs) from retirement accounts were suspended in 2020, as part of the federal government’s effort to keep the economy afloat despite medical and financial turmoil. Now they’re back, so most people who are 72 or older in 2021 will have to take at least as much as IRS tables dictate from their retirement accounts this year, and pay the resulting tax. Many IRA owners delay RMDs until yearend, but there are good reasons to act sooner rather than later.

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Three Savvy Stock Market Strategies Upon Taking RMDs from IRAs with Gains

Now that required minimum distributions from retirement accounts are back for 2021 after being waived in 2020, you should look before you leap if you’ll owe RMDs this year. I’ll outline three commonly overlooked strategies by many retirement advisors, investment advisors, and financial consultants alike, that are good for you to at least know about especially if you own a large IRA. Note that this recommendation applies not only to most account owners who are 72 or older in 2021 but also to retirement account beneficiaries subject to RMDs.

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