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tax

Do You Need a Friend at the IRS?

If you need help dealing with the IRS, the Taxpayer Advocacy Service may be just the ticket. They’re really your only friend at the IRS.

Property Flipping Gains Deemed Ordinary Income, Not Capital Gains

Property flipping activities, while they may prove lucrative to some practitioners, may result in higher taxes than anticipated.

Your Retirement Plan and Where You Live

Where you live can have a big impact on the taxation of your retirement income. Some states don’t tax retirement income at all!

Roth Conversion While Receiving 72t Payments

Can you do a Roth conversion while you are taking 72t payments from the traditional IRA? Yes, with some complications.

Tax Diversification for Investments

Reviewing the benefits of tax diversification among your retirement and other investment accounts. Timing along with your lifetime taxation.

Your Appeal Rights at the IRS

If you’re in disagreement with a result that the IRS has given you, you need to know what rights you have for an appeal.

IRA Investment Planning for Taxation

The question often comes up – what types of investments are best for my IRA? Of course, any investment that you make in a tax-deferred fashion is a good one, at least in theory. But there are some investments that make the most sense for your IRA versus other vehicles… and some investments that make more sense in other kinds of investment accounts, where possible. Listed below are a couple of considerations to take into account when considering taxation of your IRA and non-IRA investments. Bonds and other interest-bearing vehicles Given the nature of the IRA – deferring taxation on current income and growth, investments that would otherwise be taxed at ordinary income tax rates would be best for your IRA. This includes the likes of interest-bearing investments, such as CDs or bonds. Since, presumably, your tax rate when you begin taking distributions will be either the same or less […]

A Cash Flow Dilemma – Should I take distributions from my IRA or from my taxable account?

If you have an IRA and a taxable account and can afford to take funds from either but don’t need all of both, how should you prioritize?

Staging Your Roth IRA Conversion

You can benefit in the long run by staging your Roth IRA conversions. This can reduce taxes and potentially eliminate RMDs.

A Good Reason to Not Convert to Roth

Another facet that you might want to think about as you consider whether to convert traditional IRA monies to Roth IRA.

IRA Charitable Distributions – If You’re Less Than Age 70½

Can you make IRA charitable distributions before age 70½? What are the tax consequences for doing this? How does it all work?

Wash Sale Rules and IRAs

Do you know how the wash sale rule applies to IRAs? You need to be careful about what you’re doing when harvesting tax losses.

Wash Sale Rules

If you sell an investment at a loss, you need to be careful about how you re-invest the money so that you can avoid the wash sale rules.

Running Afoul of the One-Rollover-Per-Year Rule (and How to Fix It)

In case you’re not aware of it, there is a strict rule that the IRS applies with regard to IRA rollovers: you are allowed to roll funds over from an IRA using the 60-day rule only once during each 12-month period. FYI: Trustee-to-trustee transfers are not considered rollovers for this rule. Here’s an example of what could happen: Early in the year, you withdraw some money from your IRA to help you catch up on some bills. Then, you receive a bonus within the 60-day period after your withdrawal, so you deposit those funds back into the same (or any other) IRA. Later in the year, you want to take another short-term distribution from your IRA, and once again circumstances present the opportunity to put the funds back into the first IRA… but now you’re stuck. You can’t roll the distribution back into the original IRA (or any IRA), since […]

3 Ways of Dealing Without Recharacterization

Recharacterization of a Roth conversion has been gone for quite a while now. Risk reduction is more complicated now, but still possible.

What to do with a Year-End Bonus

Looking forward to a year-end bonus? See how we analyze the options for using a year-end bonus from a reader’s question.

How to Bypass Mandatory Withholding on a 401(k) Distribution

When you take a distribution from your 401(k), 20% is withheld automatically. How can you bypass this withholding?