Planning
Your IRA Distributions
Abstract: Using adult children
as designated beneficiaries of an IRA has several advantages.
The IRA can be used as an effective Credit Shelter Trust
to avoid federal estate taxes. Having adult children as beneficiaries
makes it easy at age 70 ½ to decide to use the joint life expectancy,
hybrid method of calculating the Required Minimum Distribution (RMD)
each year and minimizes the amount of the RMD. It also allows for the possibility
of stretching out the IRA for many years after the IRA owners’
death and benefiting from a longer period of tax-deferred compounding
of investment gains.
This
strategy should be seriously considered when the IRA owner and spouse
have enough assets sufficiently well invested that they are confident
their needs will be met for their lifetimes. The IRA owner should also trust the
adult children to use the inherited IRA for the benefit of the surviving
spouse if necessary.
The
IRA owner, spouse and adult children should know the following:
1.
All Beneficiary and Distribution planning decisions must
be made by age 70 ½. All elections in place at this age
are irrevocable.
2.
The Beneficiary Designations and Distribution elections should
be detailed in writing on file with the IRA Custodian.
3.
“If the IRA generated an estate tax in the estate of
the decedent, Code Section 691(c) allows the IRA beneficiary taking
a distribution from the IRA to deduct against the distribution the
portion of the federal estate tax that was paid on the IRA in the
decedents estate. Such
a deduction is claimed by the beneficiary on Schedule A (Form 1040)
as an itemized deduction. It is important to note that Code
Section 691 (c) permits an income tax deduction only for the federal
estate tax and not for the state estate tax.” [1]
4.
The IRA Custodian should permit:
4.1.
“stretch-out” or “inherited” IRAs,
4.2.
custom “per stirpes” beneficiary designations,
4.3.
multiple IRAs, each with different beneficiaries,
4.4.
the beneficiary of an inherited IRA to name successor beneficiaries
or transfer the IRA to successor custodians.
Article: When planning your
IRA distributions the first thing to do is review some facts.
These are not all the facts, but these are the important
ones to start with.
1.
The Required Beginning Date (RBD) for taking Required Minimum
Distributions (RMD) from your IRA is April 15th of the
year following the day you reach age 70 ½. Subsequently, you must take your RMD
by December 31 of each calendar year.
2.
The elections you make for calculating your RMD are irrevocable
at your RBD. Age
70 ½ is the CRITICAL
date by which you must have made decisions that will impact how
your IRA is distributed and taxed over the rest of your life and
over the rest of your beneficiaries’ lives.
3.
You can always take larger distributions from your IRA, but
you must take the correct minimum distributions or pay penalties. Since distributions from your IRA are taxed as ordinary income
you usually try to minimize the required distribution so that you
aren’t forced to take more money and pay more taxes than you
want
4.
The amount of your RMD depends on several factors.
Joint life expectancy versus single life expectancy, the
beneficiary’s age and relationship to you, and whether you
choose to recalculate the life expectancy every year or use the
term-certain method (which is just subtracting 1 from the life expectancy
you use in the first year you take your RMD).
5.
If you die before your RBD your beneficiaries have choices
on how to receive the money.
6.
If you die after your RBD your beneficiaries are locked in
to whatever choices you made when you took your first RMD.
7.
Your spouse is the only one of your possible beneficiaries
that can rollover your IRA and make it their own brand new IRA.
The spouse can name new beneficiaries, and make a brand new
RMD calculation. This is the only exception to the
irrevocable choices you make at your RBD.
8.
“If the IRA Generated an estate tax in the estate of
the decedent, Code Section 691(c) allows the IRA beneficiary taking
a distribution from the IRA to deduct against the distribution the
portion of the federal estate tax that was paid on the IRA in the
decedents estate. Such
a deduction is claimed by the beneficiary on Schedule A (Form 1040)
as an itemized deduction. It is important to note that Code
Section 691 (c) permits an income tax deduction only for the federal
estate tax and not for the state estate tax.”
9.
The ideas in this paper also apply to other Qualified Plans
such as 401(k), Pension, Profit Sharing, Keogh, etc.
Roth IRAs do not have RMD for the IRA owner, but beneficiaries
of a Roth IRA have to take RMD and so these ideas do apply to Roth
IRAs as well.
Within the
framework of these facts there is a confusing, and oftentimes contradictory,
morass of rules, regulations, opinions, suggestions and advice.
Who should you designate as your beneficiaries, should you
use Joint Life or Single Life expectancies, should you recalculate
life expectancies or use term-certain? There is no single answer for everybody.
Process.
The best way I have found to make sense of everything is
to start at the beginning with what you are trying to do.
What do you plan to do with your IRA money?
Then start asking lots of questions.
What happens to the money if I die before my RBD, what are
the income tax consequences, what are the estate tax consequences,
who pays the tax, when, how, are there any deductions available? How do I know?
What happens if I die after my RBD?
What happens if I outlive my life expectancy?
What happens if my spouse dies first?
What happens if my kids die first, if only one of my kids
dies first? What happens
if…
I
don’t know how to answer all the possible questions for everybody.
But I will use an example to try and illustrate the process.
Then it is up to you to ask the questions and reach your
own conclusions.
Priorities.
The first step is to set some priorities for what you are
trying to do with your money. For most people it looks something
like this.
1.
I want to take care of myself and my spouse for the rest
of our lives.
2.
I want to protect us against disasters.
3.
I want to give money to our children.
4.
I want to give money to our charities.
5.
I want to give money to our insurance agent if that will
keep us from giving money to the US Federal Government and enable
us to have more money for Priorities 1-4.
6.
I want to give money to our lawyer if that will keep me from
giving money to the US Federal Government and enable us to have
more money for Priorities 1-4.
7.
I don’t want to give money to the United States Federal
Government in the form of income, capital gains or estate taxes.
Most
people are not explicit with Items 5 & 6, but that is what they
end up doing, so I include them in my list of priorities.
Sometimes people give money to their lawyers and insurance
agents and they still give money to the United States Government.
You
have to decide if you are likely to spend all the money in your
IRA satisfying Priority 1. That is going to depend on how much
you spend, where your spending money comes from, what other investments
you have, how well your investments are performing, etc.
Scenario.
Let’s try an example.
Joe and Jane Smith are 65 and retired.
Joe has an IRA worth $500,000 that he rolled over from his
Profit Sharing Plan after 30 years working as an engineer and manager.
Jane has an IRA worth $250,000 that she rolled over from
her 403(b) from the school where she taught for 30 years. Joe receives Social Security of $14,400
per year, and Jane has a State sponsored Pension of $14,400 per
year. They own their
own home worth $150,000, and they have other savings and investments
totaling $100,000. They
spend $60,000 a year travelling and enjoying their retirement.
They have 2 married children ages 35 and 30, and 4
grandchildren ages 2,4,6 and 8.
According
to the Actuarial Tables in IRS Publication 590 the Joint Life and
Last Survivor Expectancy for two people aged 65 is 25.0 years.
Mr. and Mrs. Smith share the Muhlenkamp Philosophy that “Retirees
Don’t Need Income” (see Grant Duffield’s Five Year
Reflections in Muhlenkamp Memorandum # 51) and so have Muhlenkamp
investing their two IRA accounts and their Joint account; where
they expect average annualized returns 5% over inflation, or 8%
nominally. Currently, Jane is the designated
beneficiary of Joe’s IRA, and Joe is the designated beneficiary
of Jane’s IRA. With pension payments of $28,800 per
year, they are spending $31,200 (or 4%) of their investments, but
assuming their costs rise with inflation of 3% and their Social
Security and Pension payments stay flat, they expect to have to
pull more money from their investments each year.
They plan to spend their Joint Investment Assets first in
order to defer paying income tax on their IRA distributions.
Then, they will do all their spending from Joe’s IRA
until the two IRAs are roughly equal, which is when they will start
taking half their spending money from each IRA account.
Financial Planning.
Their spending and investment plan is summarized in the following
table:
|
Required |
W/D from |
Joe’s |
Jane’s |
Joint |
Total |
Year |
Spending |
Assets |
IRA |
IRA |
Assets |
Assets |
1999 |
60000 |
-31200 |
500000 |
250000 |
100000 |
850000 |
2009 |
80635 |
-51835 |
705217 |
539731 |
|
1244949 |
2019 |
108367 |
-79567 |
896652 |
854517 |
|
1751169 |
2029 |
145636 |
-116836 |
1234717 |
1143750 |
|
2378467 |
2039 |
195722 |
-166922 |
1651716 |
1455325 |
|
3107041 |
They
plan to be able to take care of themselves for the next 40 years.
That is sufficiently past their life expectancy to provide
a cushion. But they are also making assumptions
about inflation, investment returns, and spending.
Each year they should check what actually happened during
the year against their assumptions about what would happen during
the year to make sure they are still on track for staying comfortable.
So, today
they believe they have covered Priority 1.
Priority 2 is taken care of by having adequate Major Medical,
Homeowners, and Liability Insurance. They don’t need Life Insurance
because if either of them dies at any time the other has sufficient
assets to live and prosper.
Priority 3 is leave money to their children and
grandchildren. Now
we start with “What if”.
What if the IRA Owner dies before RBD?
What if
Joe dies in 2000 before turning age 70 ½?
Jane can choose to take all the money out within five years
of Joe’s death, or she can rollover his IRA to her IRA.
If she takes all the money out, she pays income taxes on
$500,000. If she does
a rollover to her IRA, she pays no income tax except on the money
she takes out every year to live on.
Since she doesn’t want to pay the Federal Government
taxes any sooner than she has to, she does the rollover.
Now,
Jane has an IRA worth $810,000, non-IRA assets of $75,000, and a
house worth $150,000. She names each of her two children
as primary beneficiaries for her IRA so that they split the IRA
at her death and she continues to take her spending money from the
non-IRA assets. So
far, no federal estate tax has to be paid, and the only income taxes
she has to pay are on the distributions she takes to live on.
What
happens if Jane dies in 2001 before she turns 70 1/2?
Her IRA is worth $874,000, her non-IRA assets are worth $46,000,
and her house is still worth $150,000.
So she has a total estate of $1,070,000.
In 2001 her estate has a Unified Credit for $675,000,
so she has $375,000 subject to estate tax. The Federal Estate Tax is approximately $120,000. Her children can pay that either by
selling the house or using the non-IRA assets and pulling money
from her IRA.
Now,
at Jane’s death, her children have three options on what to
do with the IRA. They can pull it all out by December
of 2002. They can elect to pull it all out
by December 2006. Or
they can elect to take Required Minimum Distributions based on the
life expectancy of the oldest of the two children. In 2001, the oldest child is 37, and according to the IRS Actuarial
Table has a life expectancy of 45.4 years, so in 2002 they would
have to take a distribution of 1/45th, in 2003 a distribution
of 1/44th, etc.
If they distribute the entire IRA they will owe income taxes
on $874,000; close to $346,000.
If they take distributions over the eldest child’s lifetime,
only the amount of the distribution is taxed.
The balance grows tax deferred.
By the way, the children can always pull more out than is
calculated by the RMD, but they are not forced to.
For
the children to “stretch-out” the life of the IRA they
have to be very careful not to put it in their names. They should give the IRA Custodian very clear written instructions
to rename the IRA account as follows:
“Jane Smith IRA, deceased 11/1/2001 for benefit of children Tom Smith
and Mary Jones”.
The
Social Security Number on the account should be Tom or Mary’s.
Not all custodians will allow this registration, and you
should also check to make sure that Tom and Mary can transfer the
IRA after Jane’s death to a new successor custodian.
Tom
and Mary decide to sell their parents’ house to pay the estate
taxes and add the surplus to the non-IRA assets.
They elect to stretch-out the IRA and take just the
RMD each year. The
law also allows them to name new beneficiaries just in case Tom
or Mary dies before the 45 years is up.
That allows the IRA to stay intact the full 45 years
and keeps the grandchilden from having to pay income taxes any sooner
than they want. Again,
not all custodians will allow designated beneficiaries of an IRA
to name successor beneficiaries, so you need to check on that.
One
other thing to be careful of is that most IRA Beneficiary Designation
forms default to a “per capita” distribution instead of
“per stirpes”. That means that if Tom or Mary dies
before Jane, or maybe even after Jane, the surviving sibling inherits
the entire IRA. The deceased beneficiaries share does
not go to the surviving children, but to the other primary beneficiary. Again, you should make sure that the
IRA custodian will accept a custom beneficiary designation using
the “per stirpes” language if that is what you intend.
Finally,
the children can deduct from their income tax the amount of estate
tax they had to pay due to the IRA. They are entitled to an itemized deduction on the 1040.
This is not well known and has to be carefully documented.
The first step is determining how much of the Federal Estate
Tax was due to the IRA assets. Then you have to figure out which
child gets the deduction.
Frankly, I don’t know exactly how to do it, but it is
worth figuring out.
So,
if Joe and Jane both die before the RBD the children inherit an
$874,000 IRA which they can draw down over 45 years.
They pay $120,000 federal estate taxes and can deduct part
of that from their income tax.
Is there any way to improve on the result? In other words, what could Joe and Jane have done to make sure
their children received more money after taxes?
What if the IRA Owner dies before RBD
with adult child as designated beneficiary?
What if
instead of designating each other as beneficiary, Joe and Jane designated
the children as beneficiaries? Moreover, what if Joe split his IRA
into two equal pieces and designated one child as beneficiary for
each IRA and Jane did the same thing?
Joe
dies in the year 2000 with two IRAs worth $270,000.
Each child receives a $270,000 IRA and keeps it intact, making
the election in writing and renaming as follows:
“Joe
Smith IRA deceased 11/1/2000, for benefit of son Tom Smith”
and
“Joe Smith IRA deceased 11/1/2000 for benefit of daughter Mary Jones”
Because there is a $675,000
Federal Unified Credit from Estate Tax in the year 2000, there is
no Estate Tax owed from moving $540,000 to the children.
Jane
inherits the $75,000 non-IRA account, the $150,000 house and still
owns her own IRA worth $270,000. So, there are no Federal Estate Taxes. Each child has to take a RMD from the inherited IRA by December
2000 of 1/45th
of the Market value and will pay income taxes on that amount. Those are the only taxes resulting from Joe’s death.
Jane
dies in 2001 with an estate of $490,000.
Because the Unified Credit is $675,000 there is no taxable
estate for Federal Estate Taxes. Each child receives an IRA from Jane
worth $145,800. They
also receive non-IRA assets of $46,000 and a house worth $150,000.
Each child again makes a written election to distribute the
IRA over their lifetimes and renames each IRA as described.
The
same precautions have to be taken as before to make sure the IRA
custodians will permit stretch-out IRAs and that they will accept
custom “per stirpes” and successor beneficiary designations.
Since there was no Federal Estate Tax, there is no
deduction of Federal Estate Taxes attributable to the IRA.
So, the
kids inherit over a million dollars and pay no Federal Estate Tax.
They can also keep the IRA accounts growing for 45 years
and pay income taxes on the IRAs a little bit each year.
But
what if Jane lives 30 years after Joe dies and needs money from
Joes IRA? I suggest
that before naming the children beneficiaries of Joes’ IRA
that Joe and Jane talk to Tom and Mary and explain that if Jane
needs money from the IRA the children should simply give it to her.
Tom and Mary will have to pay the income tax on the distribution,
but that is going to be a lot less than the Federal Estate Tax they
would have to pay if all the money stayed in Mary’s name. Remember, the IRAs continue to be
invested by Muhlenkamp to grow at 5% over inflation, but now the
money is in the name of the next generation.
What about using Trusts? At this point I am sure the lawyers
among you are up in arms with the following questions.
What if the kids Tom and Mary refuse to give Jane the money?
What if Tom and Mary are sued and lose the money (although
IRAs are exempt from suit in most states)?
What if Tom and Mary get divorced and the spouse takes the
money? Many times the
lawyers’ answer to the question is to make a trust the beneficiary
of the IRA. This works
well when the trust is for benefit of a minor child. It works poorly with credit shelter
and QTIP trusts where the surviving spouse receives income for life
and the children eventually inherit the principal.
[2]
Using
a trust as an IRA beneficiary can solve the problems of not trusting
the kids; but using trusts creates whole new problems of calculating
the distributions and paying the income tax on the distributions.
If the Trust owns the IRA, who receives the distribution
and who pays the income tax, the trust, the spouse, or the children?
I suspect this is why lawyers love it, because they get paid
fees to figure it out. See
Priority 6 above.
My
perspective on using trusts instead of people for IRA beneficiaries
is different from the lawyers. Trusts are useful if you want to give
money to someone AND prevent them from controlling the money.
And there can be good reasons for wanting to do that in the
case of someone unable to handle money.
But
if you need a trust because you don’t TRUST the people you
are giving money to, why do you want to give them money in the first
place?
In
our example, if Tom and Mary are now responsible adults with families,
the only reason not to designate them the beneficiary of the IRAs
is because Joe doesn’t trust them to give it back to Jane if
she needs it. But the
only reason to give Tom and Mary the IRA in the first place was
to enable them to inherit more money and pay no Federal Estate Tax.
If Joe and Jane don’t trust Tom, Mary and the respective
spouses, why do they care about how much money Tom and Mary inherit?
Let the Federal Government have it; Joe and Jane are gone
and don’t need the money anymore.
Bottom
line, the IRA can be used as the Credit Shelter Trust (or A&B
Trusts) that enable you to take full advantage of the Unified Credit
for federal estate tax. To
be effective you have to trust your heirs and make sure you communicate
with them what you are trying to do and what they are expected to
do to fulfill the plan. The tax savings and after tax wealth
that results can be enormous, so think about it.
What if the IRA Owner dies after RBD?
What happens
if the IRA Owner dies after the RBD?
Most of the above discussion about what happens to the money
after Joe’s death still applies if he dies after age 70 ½.
The differences occur primarily for those years between age
70 ½ and his death.
When
Joe turns age 70 ½ he has to make an election determining how he
will calculate his RMD. His choices are to use a Joint Life
Expectancy with his designated beneficiary or just his Single Life
Expectancy. He also has to decide if he will recalculate the life expectancy
each year or not. If
he does not recalculate (sometimes called electing term-certain)
then he simply subtracts 1 from his Life Expectancy Divisor each
year. The Life Expectancy
is used as the divisor to determine the RMD. The RMD is the Market Value of the
IRA as of 12/31 of the prior year divided by the Life Expectancy
Divisor.
Joe
‘s DOB is Jan 1, 1934.
He turns 70 ½ on July 1, 2004. He has to take his first RMD for the
year 2004 by April 15th 2005 and his RMD for 2005 by
December 31, 2005. The amount of his RMD depends on his election. ONCE
HE TAKES HIS FIRST RMD HIS ELECTION IS IRREVOCABLE.
In
most cases you should elect a joint life expectancy calculation
to give you the smallest possible RMD (remember you can always distribute
more than the RMD, but not less).
If Jane is his beneficiary, also aged 70, their Joint Life
and Last Survivor Expectancy Divisor from IRS Publication 590 is
20.6. The Market Value
of his IRA as of 12/31/2003 is $655,634, so his 2004 RMD is $655,634
/ 20.6 = $31,826. To
determine his 2005 RMD he has to decide between recalculation and
term certain. If he chooses recalculation then the
divisor from the table is 19.8 and the Market Value as of 12/31/2004
is $667,328 so his 2005 RMD is $667,328 / 19.8 = $33,703.
If he chooses the term certain method, his divisor is 19.6,
so his 2005 RMD is $34,047.
Note
that in our example Joe is planning on pulling more than the RMD
each year to live on, so minimizing his distributions for the first
few years isn’t important.
As he ages, his RMD will be more than he needs to spend,
so minimizing them is useful.
Which
method is better? Depends on what assumptions you are
willing to make. What
if Joe chooses the joint life, recalculation method and Jane dies
before he does? After her death Jane’s life expectancy goes to zero so
Joe must use his single life expectancy in the years following her
death. In 2005, when
the Joint Life and Last Survivor Expectancy Divisor is 20.6 years
his Single Life Expectancy Divisor is 15.3 years.
Using 15.3 as a divisor instead of 20.6 will result in a
larger RMD and more taxes to pay.
More what if?
What if Joe chooses the joint life, term-certain method
and Jane dies before he does? After Jane’s death Joe continues to subtract 1 from the
previous years divisor and so he can continue the same schedule
of RMD.
What
if Joe chooses the joint life, term certain method and he and Jane
both live longer than 20.6 years? Then they have emptied out their IRAs.
If
your spouse is your designated beneficiary and you choose the joint
life recalculation method you ensure that you will not outlive your
life expectancy, but you are assuming that the spouse will not outlive
the IRA owner. If
you and your spouse both make the same election one of you is going
to be wrong.
If
your spouse is your designated beneficiary and you choose the joint-life
term certain method you ensure a RMD schedule for your life expectancy
but you are assuming you will not outlive your life expectancy.
If you do outlive your life expectancy, you will empty
out your IRA. If you
choose term certain you should have a spending plan and any distributions
from your IRA in excess of your planned spending should be invested
in a non –IRA account to make sure you don’t run out of
money before you run out of breath.
You can
use what is called the hybrid method where you recalculate the IRA
owners Life Expectancy Divisor and use the term certain method for
the beneficiaries Life Expectancy Divisor. This protects you against the beneficiary dying before the
IRA owner and also helps minimize the annual RMD by recalculating
the IRA owner’s life expectancy.
What if you use an adult child as your
IRA beneficiary and the IRA owner dies after the RBD?
We already decided that it makes sense to use the Joint Life
and Survivor Expectancy method, but with a non-spouse beneficiary
more than 10 years younger you have to use the Table for Determining
Applicable Divisor for Minimum Distribution Incidental Benefit (MDIB)
for your Joint Life calculation.
Basically, this table assigns a divisor assuming your beneficiary
is 10 years younger. With a non-spouse beneficiary the
IRS also requires beneficiary life expectancy be calculated using
the term certain method.
In
our example, Joe Smith splits his IRA into two equal pieces and
names each adult child the beneficiary of one IRA.
His 2004 RMD is $667,328 / 26.2 = $25,470 and his
2005 RMD is $677,871 / 25.3 = $26,793.
At his death his life expectancy goes to zero, and each adult
child can calculate their RMD using their remaining life expectancy.
This means that when Joe turned 70 ½ Tom is age 35 with a
life expectancy of 47.3 years and Mary is age 30 with a life expectancy
of 52.3 years. If Joe
dies at age 75, Tom uses a divisor of 42.3 years, and Mary uses
a divisor of 47.3 years for the RMD in the year after Joe’s
death. Each year thereafter they subtract one from the Divisor.
If
the IRA owner dies after the RBD using an adult child as beneficiary
reduces the RMD and helps ensure the IRA lasts as long as the owner.
It can also be an effective way of using a stretch-out IRA
and avoiding Federal Estate Tax just as if the IRA owner dies before
his RBD. Again, you
have to be able to trust and depend on your adult children to use
the IRA distributions for the surviving spouse if that is necessary.
What if you want to use a minor child
as your beneficiary? The
same principles apply, but now you do want to use either an Irrevocable
Trust or a UGMA account for benefit of the minor as the beneficiary.
You need a trust or guardian account because minors
cannot legally own securities and if you leave it to the minor directly
the probate courts will probably get involved. You do not want this. When using a trust or guardian account
for benefit of a minor as a beneficiary you want your written RMD
election to include how the minor will take distributions after
your death since a trustee or guardian is not allowed to make distribution
elections for an inherited IRA.
Also, you want to make sure that you do not run into Generation
Skipping Tax problems as a result of leaving your IRA to a grandchild
or other person more than one generation younger than you.
Finally,
what if Joe and Jane choose their adult children as beneficiaries
for their IRAs and then live for 30 years, which is 5 years past
their joint life expectancy?
The big change is that the IRA is not as large but the personal
assets are far larger. Since
the IRA becomes relatively small it is no longer an effective Credit
Shelter Trust, and the Smiths may want to use an A&B Trust to
avoid the estate tax. Whatever
remains in the IRA will still be distributed to the children as
described above.
Conclusion.
By now your eyes have glazed over.
There are simply too many options and possibilities.
Don’t let this keep you from doing your homework.
Once you have established your priorities the options
will narrow rapidly into a manageable list of choices.
Please let us know if we can help.
Bibliography
Donald R Levy, Steven G Lockwood,
and Gary S Lesser, Individual Retirement Account Answer Book,
Fourth Edition, Panel Publishers, 1998
Seymour Goldberg, J.K. Lasser’s How
to Pay Less Tax on your Retirement Savings, Second Edition, Macmillan
Inc, 1997.
Publication 590, Individual
Retirement Arrangements, Department of the Treasury, Internal
Revenue Service, 1998.
Publication 904, Interrelated
Computations for Estate and Gift Taxes, Department of the
Treasury, Internal Revenue Service, 1998.
Russell G Galer, “IRS Private
Letter Ruling Clarifies IRA Beneficiary Designation Rules”,
Investment Company Institute, September 1999.
Lynn Brenner, “The IRA Minefield”
Bloomberg Wealth Manager, January/February 1999.
Laura Sanders, “Eternal IRAs”, Forbes,
June 21, 1993.
“Collision Course”, Forbes, June 20, 1994.
“Final Payments”, Forbes, June 17, 1996.
“Questions you didn’t ask but should have”, Forbes,
August 26, 1996.
Margaret A Malaspina, “Inheriting
Confusion”, Fidelity Focus, Fall 1999.
Melvin L Maisel, “The IRA
Mistake …Nearly Everyone Makes and How to Keep It from Costing
You Dearly”,
Bottom Line, August 1999.
Rebecca McReynolds, “IRA Stretching”,
Mutual Funds Magazine, September 1999.
Gregory Kolojeski, “Required
Minimum Distributions for Traditional and Roth IRAs”, Roth
IRA Website (www.rothira.com/required.html),
September 17, 1998.
Lynn Asinof, “Oops…How
a Variety of Basic Foul-Ups Are Bedeviling the Beneficiaries of
IRAs”, The Wall Street Journal, Monday, March 29, 1999.
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Mary Rowland, “Details, Details”,
Dow Jones Investment Advisor, January 1998.
[1] Donald R Levy, Steven G Lockwood, and Gary S Lesser,
Individual Retirement Account Answer Book, Fourth Edition,
Panel Publishers, 1998 page 11-16, question 11:35
[2] Lynn Brenner, “The IRA Minefield” Bloomberg
Wealth Manager, January/February 1999.
Anthony Muhlenkamp
©1999 All Rights Reserved