by Barry C Picker, CPA/PFS, CFP Paperless, paperless, paperless. It’s all the rage. We have to get rid of paper. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for it. I would love to get all the stuff in our filing cabinets into electronic format and shred, shred, shred. But I’ve concluded that instead of […]
The Supreme Court decision in Windsor v. US has effectively struck down Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act retroactively. As such, anyone affected can file amended joint returns for all open years. The normal Statute of Limitations is three years. Therefore, 2010, 2011 and 2012 are all open years. Additionally, if both spouses […]
It’s been a good year for the stock market; many portfolios are showing a decent gain. This is true for mutual funds also.But mutual funds have a little tax quirk – they must distribute their capital gains to their shareholders. This is all well and good, except that most shareholders just reinvest the dividends in […]
Executive Summary Mother paid medical expenses directly to provider, and also paid daughter’s real estate taxes. IRS denied deduction to daughter since the daughter did not pay the expenses. Tax Court ruled that based upon substance over form, the mother had in fact made a gift to the daughter, and the daughter was the payor […]
Before they inherited $3 million in retirement accounts from their father last year, the three middle-aged siblings didn’t know it was possible for heirs to stretch out the tax benefits of such accounts for decades. But what they also discovered after his death is that doing this is tricky–and in some cases impossible–if the original […]
Executive Summary Surviving spouse (S) was not treated as the payee of the decedent’s (H) IRA, and thus could not take the IRA and roll it over into an IRA in her own name. Facts H died in 2004 at the age of 75, a resident of State W, survived by his spouse S, […]
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY A bankruptcy court in Florida has ruled that an individual’s IRAs are not exempt from the claims of creditors due to the individual’s transactions with the IRA. FACTS Ernest W. Willis filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 7 of the Bankruptcy Code on February 16, 2007. He claimed exemptions pursuant to11 U.S.C. Sec 522(b)(3)(C) […]
Iin a recent private letter ruling, that could best be described as not taxpayer friendly, the Internal Revenue Service has ruled that a transfer of assets from one IRA to another IRA, while the taxpayer is taking distributions that are part of a series of substantially equal periodic payments, is an improper modification. As a […]
