The Slott Report

One of the most common Roth IRA questions I'm asked is, "Should I make a Roth conversion?" While Roth conversions can make sense at any age, depending on your particular circumstances, generally speaking, the younger you are, the more it makes sense. In this article we go over 3 reasons to wait until you retire to make a Roth conversion.

An issue we recently discussed with a financial advisor highlighted the rule that there are two separate parts to a SEP (Simplified Employee Pension) plan. If both parts of the SEP are not executed, then severe tax consequences can result to both the employer and any eligible employees. We detail the two parts of a SEP IRA below.

IRS has announced that they are going to go along with the Tax Court decision in the Bobrow case, but they won’t do so until at least January 1, 2015. What's this mean? We detail this ruling below.

April 16th is here. The blossoms are budding on the trees, the birds are beginning to chirp and, of course, CPAs and tax preparers everywhere are coming out of a 2 ½ month hibernation. Tax season is officially over. With that in mind, taxes may be the last thing you want to talk about right now, but with the sting of this year’s tax season still fresh, now’s the time to start thinking about a few easy steps to help make next year’s tax season a little less... well… taxing! Here are three such steps you might want to consider.

If you're lucky enough to be getting an income tax refund from IRS for 2013, you might be wondering what you can do with that money. Certainly you can use it to pay some bills, or treat yourself to something you've wanted to buy for a while. But if you're thinking about using that refund to help save for retirement, you're in luck. The IRS allows you to have that refund check directly deposited into an IRA if you follow certain procedures when you file your federal income taxes for 2013.

How do I tell IRS that my IRA distribution or Roth conversion is not taxable? We get this question fairly frequently at tax time - especially if the client has done a "backdoor" Roth conversion. Click to find the answer and more information on After-Tax IRA Contributions, Distributions, and Conversions at tax time.

Prohibited transactions are a list of things that you cannot do with your retirement account. In fact, they are one of the worst things you can do with a retirement account. When a prohibited transaction occurs, your entire IRA is deemed distributed as of January 1 of the year you made the prohibited transaction. This can lead to any number of negative consequences, the least of which include massive taxation and penalties. Since the prohibited transaction rules are so important, the basic information can be readily found in IRS publications and other places on the web, but here are 3 things most people don’t know about them.