Can the Uniform Life Table be used under age 70 1/2?

[katieinny]

An IRA holder is age 66.  His siblings are his beneficiaries (he is not married).  He wants to start taking life expectancy distributions, but I noticed that the Uniform Life Table starts at age 70.  Must he use the single life table to determine life expectancy distributions?

[Bird]

He can use whatever he wants to determine his distributions before his RBD - any table, any age on any table, a random number generator, whatever.  

[katieinny]

We want to be accurate about this because of the Medicaid rules.  They will not treat the IRA as an exempt asset if he isn't on a life expectancy distribution schedule.  We'd like to make sure that he doesn't take more than he has to, so using a joint table will help.  I was surprised when I saw that the uniform life table doesn't go lower than 70.

[Lou S.]

Isn't the Uniform Life Table simply a subset of Table II where the beneficiary is assumed to be 10 years younger than the IRA owner?

[Peter Gulia]

If your client wants an IRA asset not to be counted for one or more Medicaid purposes, a relevant measure might be none of the tables established for minimum-distribution rules under Internal Revenue Code of 1986 § 401(a)(9) and provisions that refer to it.  A State’s Medicaid program might use different rules and measures for how much one may, must, or must not receive from a retirement account.

 

Some of Medicaid’s law is Federal law, and some is State law.  You might find the law in a combination of statutes, rules or regulations, other administrative-law interpretations, and court decisions.  The law varies considerably from State to State.

[Luke Bailey]

Fiduciary Guidance Counsel makes a good point, katieinny. I was not familiar with the issue and based on his post I Googled what I thought might be a good search and turned up (a) a NY state life expectancy table, (b) lots of offers of annuities by insurance companies, and (c) an article indicating that, at least in most states, to not be counted as a transfer the annuity must be irrevocable, which would mean purchase of an actual contract. So I think the bottom line is you need to investigate your state's rules.

[R Griffith]

I remember having a .pdf document of all the divisors but couldn't locate it.  However, a google search provided this result, which I believes provides the information you are looking for (baring the exceptions others have provided regarding the rules you may need for State law).

http://www.annuityadvisors.com/reference/detail/rmd-table?refid=96

[Bird]

17 hours ago, Luke Bailey said:

an article indicating that, at least in most states, to not be counted as a transfer the annuity must be irrevocable, which would mean purchase of an actual contract.

!!!

And this makes sense, since simply taking a distribution based on a table could be stopped at any time.

[Kelley Schieffelin]

Sect. 8 rules, governing certain Federally subsidized housing, include retirement accounts to count as income.  Can it be counted if this applicant has not reached the 59.5 age to have access to these retirement funds?