Quick! Now's the time to finish up your 2018 tax activities. It's coming up to the end of the year - time to make sure you have done all the tax "things" you need to do before the year ends. Can you defer any income to next year? Can you accelerate any deductions into this year? Do you need to sell losing investments to offset any gains? Have you contributed to your retirement accounts? Have you spent down your flex spending accounts? And, relevant to the point of this post: have you taken ...
Naming A Trust As A Beneficiary Of An Ira
This discussion comes up a lot in my estate planning – should I name a trust as a beneficiary of an IRA? The answer is almost always no, although the pros and cons need to be weighed on a case by case basis. Typically this question boils down to whether the tax consequences of naming a trust as the beneficiary are outweighed by the original purpose of the trust. To address this question, we first need to think about why the trust was created. It might be a trust designed to protect ...
