Non traditional investments in pension plans

[Guest MitchG10]

Non traditional investments for pension plans

What creative strategies are there for putting current assets into my IRA?

Has anyone been hired as a contractor by his IRA? Is there anything special needing to be done?

If buying and selling real estate within an IRA, significant profits can be garnered quickly. What triggers an IRS audit of a IRA?

If you have had your pension plan invest in non traditional investments, such as real estate, mortgages, mobile home paper,tax leins, etc., could you express the pitfalls?

Which pension plan custodians administer non traditional investments, brainstorm strategies and help raise funds for their business minded pension plan clients from their other more passive minded pension plan cleints?

Where can I get good info regarding the Unrelated Business Tax issue?

[Guest claretcollector]

Mitch - best Q&A s I recently saw were posted at a non-traditional plan administrator's web page. No recommendations, just thought it might be helpful -

http://www.entrustadmin.com/Questions_abou..._investing.html

[Belgarath]

Mitchg10 - Your pension plan can generally invest in "non-traditional" investments - such as real estate, for example. You need to be very careful about prohibited transaction issues, and Fiduciary prudence issues, (diversification, liquidity, safety, etc...) but provided you do all this, such investments are permissible, unless the plan document prohibits them - and some do. As far as the IRA's, there is more latitude regarding the type of investments, since it is your own money you are investing. But prohibited transaction issues still apply - so you cannot hire yourself as contractor in your IRA, for example.

UBTI applies, but I'm not familiar with the strategies for avoiding it. I'm guessing there may be some, but have no firsthand knowledge.

claretcollector - if you haven't had a 1990 Chateau Montrose, sell your soul to get a taste of one! One of the greatest wines I've ever tasted. One of the few I ever bought on futures that worked out...