An estate can become the beneficiary of a person’s IRA in a couple of ways. First, the estate could be named outright as the beneficiary on the beneficiary form. This is not recommended. Why? One reason is that a non-designated beneficiary (like an estate), must follow certain restrictive payout rules.
Question:
I have a client who just retired at age 80. He has $800,000 in his 401(k) plan which is being rolled over to an IRA. Does he have to take an RMD this year based on the December 31, 2022 401(k) account value, and can he defer that to early 2024?
Thank you!
Last week in Kansas City, the Ed Slott team hosted our first in-person training program for members of our Elite Advisor Group since late 2019. While we managed to stay in contact with everyone via virtual meetings for the last two years, it was good to again see people face-to-face. The conversations were lively and interaction among the members during the breaks was spirited.
If the owner of an inherited IRA was required to take RMDs from the IRA prior to his death, can a beneficiary who is younger than age 70 1/2 request QCDs from the inherited IRA?
As discussed in the October 18 Slott Report, spousal beneficiaries of IRAs can take advantage of certain payout rules that aren’t available to non-spouse beneficiaries.
For example, a surviving spouse who remains a beneficiary can defer required minimum distributions (RMDs) until the year her deceased spouse would have turned age 72. Also, when RMDs begin for surviving spouse beneficiaries, the spouse can go back to the IRS Single Life Expectancy (SLE) Table each year to recalculate her life expectancy factor.
June is PRIDE Month. This June also marks the sixth anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court case Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage. In the wake of this decision, millions of same-sex couples headed to the alter over the past few years.
Many of these newlyweds, never expecting to see a day when they would be allowed to marry, may not have paid much attention to the special breaks that married couples receive under the tax code. When it comes to IRA rules, spouses have many advantages, and couples in same-sex marriages are no exception. Here are four special IRA rules for spouses that same-sex couples should know about:
There are always questions as to the correct way to handle the required minimum distribution (RMD) for the year of death of the IRA owner. This is especially true when a spouse is the beneficiary.
The regulations are clear that even a spouse beneficiary does not get a pass when it comes to the year-of-death RMD. It must be paid out or there will be a penalty. However, a spouse who is doing a spousal rollover by transfer or by treating the account as her own does have some flexibility.
This week's Slott Report Mailbag answers readers' questions about rollovers, spouse as the beneficiary, and the backdoor Roth.
It sounds funny to say, but death is a part of life for all of us. It’s one of the few things that all of us have in common at some point, and it’s one of the few issues that must be addressed in every plan. While every situation is unique and we all have our own goals and objectives, the overwhelming majority of married couples with IRAs and other similar accounts, such as 401(k)s and 403(b)s, name their spouse as their primary beneficiary as part of their estate plans. As such, knowing the rules for when a spouse inherits an IRA is critical for just about every married couple.
In recent Private Letter Ruling (PLR 201706004) the IRS allowed a widow to do a spousal rollover, but with an interesting twist that also ruled the five-year rule applied because the IRA had no designated beneficiary.
