Hi everyone. I'll admit it, I'm in the dark, but you have to start somewhere and would appreciate any advice offered. I want to start a Roth IRA, using ONLY guaranteed investments like FDIC insured CD's, or similar. I am absolutely NOT interested in mutual funds, etc. I have only about 12 years to go and I want to play it safe and then some. CD's interest me because they pay an interest rate I can live with, currently 4.5 % or better. My question is can these accounts be used in an IRA, and where can I get info on them? I just seem to be going around in circles sending emails that don't get replied to. I would also consider other safe investments like Treasury Bonds, but I could use some advice to get started. Thanks Rick

Is it possible for me to open an ROTH IRA for my 9 year old daughter? I am divorced and do not have custody of my daughter. I do have visitation rights and pay child support (on good terms with ex so I can get my daughter whenever I want).

My daughter has a basic savings account that is in my name but for her (my old savings account before I switched banks). I would like to start her ROTH IRA with the funds that are currently in the savings account since it earns pennies each month.

Is a minor allowed to have a ROTH IRA? Will I have to be on the account? Does it matter that she does not live with me? I want to control the account since I will be making the contributions on a bi-weekly basis.

I've been contributing to my 401k (TSP) for the past 4 years. This will be my first investment outside of the 401k and basic savings account.

What institutes should I look into? I have heard a lot about ING. I bank with Bank of America, Suntrust, and First Georgia Community Bank if that matters.

Thanks for any help!!

if an ER has a new program whereby HCEs in a 401(k) plan make their 401(k) election online w/o a paper copy going to HR, and the ER finds out that the HCE has inadvertently set level too high, could the

ER itself or the TPA go into that HCE's account, w/o the HCE's consent, and automatically reduce the elective deferral so the plan doesn't run afoul of ADP testing?

If not, what other remedies are available to the ER??

thanks in advance for your help.

Plan was cash balance Defined Benefit with a GUST determination letter. This plan was restated on July 2006 to a non cash balance plan using a GUST volume submitter.

The employer EIN ends in 6, so my question is: Since cycle A for individually designed plans is from 2/1/06 to 1/31/07, should this plan have been amended for EGTRRA before being amended onto the volume submitter document?

Thanks

Thanks to the IRS for changing the 2006 1099-R instructions. See the release at http://www.irs.gov/formspubs/article/0,,id=109875,00.html

*** If you downloaded the IRS 1099-R instructions prior to 11/10/2006, junk that copy and download the newest version (http://www.irs.ustreas.gov/formspubs/index.html).

Two big changes for IRA providers - (a) The IRS finally clarified the issue of how to report IRA distributions that might contain nondeductible amounts and (b) the IRS clearly state thats the responsibility of qualifying an entity for a charitable IRA distribution is on the taxpayer. Unfortunately, the IRS hasn't released the 2006 version of Pub 590 to give the taxpayer more guidance on the charitable IRA distribution issue.

Can the beneficiary (of a "Beneficiary IRA") of an IRA owner who was over 70 1/2 when owner died, make a distribution to a charity?

I received a 401k Safe Harbor notification on Friday December 1.

On the following Mondy, I received another email saying that my employer is changing their mind because too many people called to increase their contributions!

Is there somethink wrong with this? I assumed there would have to be a reasonable announcement time to abandon just like there is to switch the plan.

thanks for any references,

Helcul

anyone here aiming for a million dollars from their 401k plans? it says in this article, http://www.research401k.com/millionaire-401k.html that if you contribute $10,000 total a year, you would have a whopping 4.8million upon retirement!

I'm curious as to what other TPA's are doing that handle only allocated accounts, where the investment company produces account statements. I'm an independent TPA not in the statement production business. Some investment companies are already stating they will not assist w/ the PPA vesting notice requirements even though IMHO programming this information would be relatively simple.

Is it permissible to generate a generic statement to participants at year end that states the vesting provisions of the plan and how to apply them, or does PPA require a customized statement for each participant, stating their particular vested percentage for each money type. Although such a statement would be a redundant repetition of the SPD, the alternative which is to provide a customized statement will prove very costly to the client (in terms of what I would have to charge to recoup the production costs).

Thank you in advance for any help.

A plan's normal form of NRB is life only annuity.

To satisfy the RMD rules, among other alternatives, the payments can be made a) as an equivalent 100% J&S annuity and b) as an Equivalent increasing annuity with annual increases <5%.

Q1: Can these two be comined, i.e. as an Equivalent increasing 100% J&S? I don't see why not.

Q2: Are there any documents that are required to be executed to use these alternatives or does one just compute the numbers and keep them in file?

Thanks.

I am trying to verify the following for 2007:

Coverdell Accounts got no changes.

Roth IRA

Married phase-out range $156,000 - $166,000

Single and Head of Household phase-out range $99,000 - $114,000

Traditional IRA (Active Participant)

Joint phase-out range $83,000 - $93,000

Single and Head of Household phase-out range $52,000 - $62,000

Joint filers (with only 1 active participant) phase-out range $156,000 - $166,000

Thanks

Let's suppose you have a sole prop who makes a $30,000 contribution to a PS plan. He has life insurance in the plan, TTC of $1,000.00. In this situation, he just deducts $29,000 on his 1040 when he files it. So far, so good.

Now suppose that in a given year, he makes no contribution to the plan. There's still TTC, since premium paid from the fund. How does he report this on his 1040, since there's no otherwise normally deductible contribution from which to subtract it? As miscellaneous income on line (well, I don't have the form handy, but whatever line you use to report miscellaneous income?) I guess that's what I'd do in lieu of anything more concrete...

Other?

A participant in a 409(A) plan is seeking distribution from the plan under the unforeseeable emergency definition. He's bankrupt, has tax liens and numerous health problems. He's still collecting his pay check.

It seems to us that the bankruptcy and tax liens satisfies the definition, but I would like to get some input from others who deal with this on a regular basis.

I have to get a handle on DB DC combination plans. Is Sal Tripodi's ERISA outline book the best source?Anybody recommend anything else?

this is a repeat of last year's puzzle, but now there are 21 new pictures to identify. (last year had 80, and #80 has changed)

in all fairness (who me?) I have included the answers on sheet 3 of the excel sheet for the first 79. those didn't change from last year (or at least as quick an eyeball I gave them.

a list of 180 Christmas songs from which to make your selection.

100 'pictures' to identify.

ho ho ho.

Our HDHP plan has separate deductibles for network and non-network providers ($4000 vs $8000 for family coverage). Which deductible would be used for determining the maximum HSA contribution? ($4000 or $5450 for '06)

Additionally, the max out-of-pocket for non-network coverage ($16000) appears to violate the out-of-pocket limit for '06 - would this affect which deductible gets used for the contribution calculation? Thanks in advance.

Retirement law professionals:

After spending hours of research to locate any precedents or case law relating to "Accelerated" Breaks In Service to no avail, I thought I would also reach out to other experts in that community to see if anyone is familiar with this issue.

As we know, ERISA provides an "incentive" to former employees (EEs) of a company whereby the code requires pension plans rules allow formerly accrued balances of EEs to be "restored" as long as the EE becomes reemployed prior to reaching the "Five Year Break In Service" time frame.

We also know that whenever a company decides to amend their pension plan, such as in this case, to revise the plan year from one 12 month period to a new 12 month period, they must notify the plan participants within a reasonable time frame. For the pension plan in question, the plan year was adjusted from ending each year on 8/31 to ending each year on 12/31. The point at which that amendment took place (9/01)effectively created an additional "Short Plan Year" that was only 4 months long. For active participants in the plan, I gather the short plan year is an advantage that accelerates the EEs vesting and/or service credit time frame- obviously a good thing.

However, for the rehired EE that plans on returning to the company prior to the former plan's Five Year Break In Service schedule is realized, such an amendment would effectively "accelerate" the Break In Service time frame (e.g. an EE with only 4+ years of separation could potentially be deemed as exceeding the Five Year Break In Service because a Short Plan Year was squeezed into that period). Since any amendments need only be conveyed to active participants or retirees, any former EE that has plans to return to work prior to the Five Year Break In Service could still potentially forfeit their former balances and be treated as a new EE if they base their deadline for re-application and re-hire on the last known plan year schedule information. This circumstance does not seem to be addressed in the Code, but I suspect it has come up in prior litigation. I say this because although a Short Plan Year can benefit an active EE, it potentially can be a detriment to a returning EE- something I suspect ERISA did not intend when providing the incentive to EEs for returning to the company.

One could argue, it is either incumbant on the former EE to research with their former ER whether there has been any changes to the retirement plans prior to becoming a rehire or incumbant on the ER to notify a potential re-hire that is returning with the Five Year Break In Service time frame, that changes have occured and thereby may affect the decision by the re-hire applicant as to whether he or she should continue to persue being re-hired.

I would appreciate any professional insight or references that might clarify the government's position on this one...

Regards,

Brooke James

My wife is self-employed. We, have been using the SEP, but if she Nets less than 50K in a year it works out better for her to use a simple since we can contribute the 10,000 limit right away. So we have several questions.

First,

can a self-employed person / sole proprietor pay themselves as an employee, create a Jan 1'st "Bonus" check such that after SS&MC taxes the remaining $10,000 could be contributed to a simple plan? Of course her employer self would also have to do a 3% match on top of that. for a total of 10,300 to the simple account. And a payroll check of roughly: (10,000/(1.00-0.0765)= 10,828.37(what I'm not taking into account is that the money not sent in to the Simple i.e. 10,828.37-10,000 the SS&MC taxes themselves would be subject to federal witholding. so the "bonus" check would need to be about $11,000 or so.)

Second,

Can she hire me as employee and do the same as above?

Third,

Since, I have a 401K at work, am I limited to 15,500 for the year in Total Contributions to all my IRAs?

Finally,

If she paid out these "Bonus" checks to both of us on Jan 1st, equaling about 23,000 in expenses to her business, putting her company in the red for the beginning few months of the year. Would it be a problem if she ended the year at a loss, when in fact she paid herself? (although it comes off our joint tax return because we both made the maximum contributions we could to our separate IRA's). Also, if her businesss needs to "make" the money it pays to her and I, could I pay her business for some bogus service with our personal money to make up for the shortfall, at least on paper?

I know this is very convoluted, I am just a nut about finding ways of using things like this to our advantage. The net effect is we can put up to 2*$10,300=20,600 into a SIMPLE IRA for each of us, at the beginning of the year, just by her having her own business, all completely tax deductable(for the moment). And in a few years, we could convert each account to ROTHs So.... I'm basically increasing the amount I can contribute to ROTHs because we have passed the AGI limits to use the standard ROTH account, but even if we hadn't this would still be a lot more than the 4,000 currently allowed for each year!

I started to invest in a Roth IRA in 2006 with a maximum of $4000 per year. My question is, am I also allowed to own a traditional IRA in the same year?

I have a 401k at work to which I'm contributing 6% of my pay to get the employee match. I just turned 41 and I feel that time is closing in on me. Any info would be highly appreciated

When determing if the annual safe harbor notice was made within the proper timeframe, when is it deemed to have be made? For instance, if it is mailed, is it the postmark or actual date of receipt?