I rarely write about specific tax rulings, particularly private letter rulings, but this one is just too packed with lessons to pass up. In this situation, a lifetime of accumulation winds up being unnecessarily whacked with taxes simply because of procedural errors and lack of planning or good advice.
Below is a breakdown of some important components to this recent legislation, including what business owners, families, and struggling individuals may need to know.
Only two years after Congress gave us sweeping changes with the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, we now have the "SECURE" Act. Passed and signed just days before Christmas, we find that there are some goodies, as well as some lumps of coal.
A lot of people have aging life insurance policies of various kinds that are no longer needed and/or about to lapse. The normal course is to just let them lapse… end of story. With some planning, this old policy could be used to shield future taxable income.
One day, your kids or grandkids will inherit what you leave behind. Or, you may be the one set to inherit from the older generation. In either case, understanding the different tax ramifications between various asset/account types will go a long way toward avoiding mistakes at the time of inheritance and hopefully set the stage for
Not exactly an easy task… summarizing the largest tax change in 30 years. Instead of an exhaustive list of changes, here are the items we feel are most applicable to our clients, in order of relevance. Where possible, we offer planning considerations.
Just like I hate predicting future investment returns, I also hate talking about proposed tax legislation. The struggle comes from talking about things that may never come to pass, or may change by the time you read this. However, there are a couple of things in the current proposals that call for attention before the end of 2017.