August 1, 2016, is the deadline for filing retirement or employee benefit returns (5500 series) for plans on a calendar year. (The usual due date of July 31, 2016, is a Sunday.) You’ll also want to note two IRS updates regarding Form 5500. First, the compliance questions are optional. Form 5500 includes new compliance questions for 2015 tax years (returns with a due date of August 1, 2016, for calendar year filers). Because the questions were
According to recent statistics, budget cuts, staff attrition, and a heavy workload for IRS employees mean your chances of undergoing a tax audit are less than 1%. Does that sound like a non-event to you? Don’t be lured into a false sense of security. The statistic is a blended rate covering many types of incomes and taxpayers. Here are some of the reasons returns were audited.
Planning can help you achieve a comfortable retirement. Here are five suggestions to consider.
In May, the Department of Labor updated the rules for paying overtime. Under the new rules, salaried employees who earn less than $913 per week ($47,476 per year) will be eligible for overtime pay. That’s double the annual exempt amount of $23,660 from previous rules. In addition, the total annual pay for an exempt highly compensated employee is $134,004 (up from $100,000 previously). These amounts will be updated automatically every three years beginning in 2020. The
Have you ever considered writing down a list of all your assets (with account numbers, passwords, and so on), as well as debts and recurring payments? Making such a list and putting it in a secure place can be a godsend if something ever happens to you and you become incapacitated, because your family will have a much easier time looking after your affairs. In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, a middle-class couple
Congress has revived a law that lets you make charitable donations directly from your IRA, which might provide you with some significant tax advantages. The “IRA charitable rollover” was discontinued at the end of 2014. But Congress has now resurrected it, made it permanent, and also made it retroactive to the beginning of 2015. If you’re over the age of 70½, you’re required to take minimum distributions each year from your IRA, and you have to
Even though a wealthy family put assets in a trust for their children in order to protect them from creditors, a child’s interest in the trust could be divided in a divorce, says the Massachusetts Appeals Court. While this result is unusual, it goes to show that even a solid spendthrift trust might not be perfect if a creditor – in this case, a spouse – is sympathetic enough. Curt Pfannenstiehl was a beneficiary of a
Stockbrokers, financial planners and insurance agents who provide advice regarding IRAs and other retirement accounts will have new responsibilities toward clients, and the way they bill their clients may change, under new rules announced by the U.S. Labor Department. Under the rules, advisors must now act in their clients’ best interests when they make recommendations. In the past, many advisors merely had to make recommendations that were “suitable” for a client, even if what they recommended
Executors who have to file a federal estate tax return, and some heirs who receive assets from an estate that is subject to the federal estate tax, may be facing a significant new problem as a result of rules just issued by the IRS. The problem only affects larger estates – generally those where the deceased person’s assets, large lifetime gifts, and life insurance proceeds total more than $5.45 million. But for those estates, it’s a
It’s not uncommon for seniors to name one person in their power of attorney document to handle their finances if they become incapacitated, and to name someone else to make decisions for them in their health care proxy. For instance, a senior might live with one child or be very close to him or her, and trust that child to make medical decisions – because the child is familiar with the senior’s day-to-day health issues. On
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