“Drizzle, Drazzle, Drozzle, Drome – time for zis one to come home…” So you’ve done a Roth Conversion and now you’re ready to do your taxes and (horrors!) you see the bill for the conversion! Yikes! Somehow a simple decimal point miscalculation has caused your nice little conversion to run up a HUGE tax bill… [...]
Posts from ‘November, 2009’
5 Tactics for Required Minimum Distributions
So – you’ve reached that magic age, 70½, and now you’ve got to begin taking the dreaded Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs) from your various retirement accounts. Listed below are a few tactics that you might want to employ as you go through this process. Perhaps one or another will make the process a little less [...]
Flash! Extension for First-Time Homebuyer’s Credit
I wrote about this credit’s expiration some time ago, (you can see this post for the original article) – and as anticipated, this past week Congress has opted to stretch out the expiration date for 7 months, through June 30, 2010. Briefly, this credit provides up to $8,000 in credit for first-time homebuyers who have [...]
Change Coming for Earned Income Tax Credit Calculation in 2011
Continuing with the articles I’ve been writing about the massive changes coming at the end of tax year 2010 (see this article as an index to all of the provisions that are changing), this time we turn our attention to the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) calculations, which are changing and will amount to a [...]
A Roth Conversion Strategy – Spread the Tax Over 3 Years
As you consider your options for a 2010 Roth Conversion strategy, you’ll probably agonize over the decision of when to pay the tax: you can choose to pay all of the tax in 2010, or half in 2011 and half in 2012. All of it upfront is a lot of money! But then again, half [...]
Don’t Forget Social Security in Your Roth IRA Conversion Strategy
With the coming change to the Roth IRA conversion rules, there is lots of focus on the decisions you face when considering a conversion. One area that often gets short shrift is the future impact on Social Security benefits taxation. Understandably, this hasn’t really hit the radar for next years’ conversion topics, because this is [...]
Not So Fast! 9 Special Considerations Before Rolling Over Your 401(k)
Conventional wisdom has long told us that when we leave employment – either by taking another job, getting laid off, or retiring – it makes good sense to rollover our 401(k) plans to either an IRA or to our new employer’s 401(k) plan if that makes sense. However – and if you read here much, [...]
Are You Ready For the DB/k?
Buried deep within the bowels of the Pension Protection Act of 2006 (pages 231-238 of the technical explanation) was a special provision that most folks don’t know about… this provision contains the framework of a new type of retirement plan. This new type of retirement plan is called a combination plan – meaning the combination [...]
And if you've come here to learn about queuing waterfowl, I apologize for the confusion. You may want to discuss your question with Lester, my loyal watchduck and self-proclaimed "advisor's advisor".
