Whether as bullion, coins, funds, stocks, or derivatives, gold holds an age-old fascination. Smart investing takes into account how gains are taxed.
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Personal financial planning
QLACs protect against outliving retirement savings
With longer retirements due to increasing life expectancies, today’s retirees have to worry about outliving their retirement savings.
Charitable trusts and the streamlined exempt-status application
It is not unusual for a tax adviser to suggest that a client involved in estate tax planning leave some assets to a charity.
Survey: Financial planning services help firms retain clients, increase revenue
Adding personal financial planning (PFP) services can help a CPA firm attract and retain clients and increase its revenue, the AICPA’s recent Economic Benefit of PFP Services survey found.
Financial planning
Investors’ confidence in investing in U.S. public companies—and in audited financial information released by those companies—has risen to a seven-year high in 2014.
Changes proposed to allocation rules for rollovers
Disbursements containing both pretax and after-tax contributions may be treated as a single distribution.
IRS fills in details of one-a-year IRA rollover rule
The IRS clarified how the recently announced change in how it interprets the statutory one-rollover-per-year rule for individual retirement arrangements (IRAs) will affect 2014 rollovers and how the rules will apply starting in 2015 (Announcement 2014-32). Sec. 408(d)(3)(A)(i) permits a tax-free rollover of funds in a taxpayer’s IRA as long
Data security, regulation spark investor confidence in US stock exchanges
Data security and regulatory oversight are the top factors contributing to rising investor confidence in U.S. stock exchanges, according to a Center for Audit Quality (CAQ) pulse poll released Tuesday. Seventy percent of investors responding to the CAQ’s 2014 Main Street Investor Survey, which was released Oct. 9, said they
Boilerplate trust clauses
Many clients sign estate planning documents without paying much attention to the clauses they contain. One clause that few clients pay attention to is the one governing how that client’s incapacity could be determined—and therefore how the client could be removed from serving as a fiduciary or trustee. A high-profile
2015 inflation-adjusted items and tax tables issued
The IRS issued the annual inflation adjustments for 2015 for more than 40 tax provisions as well as the 2015 tax rate tables for individuals and estates and trusts (Rev. Proc. 2014-61). Among the inflation-adjusted amounts that have increased are the personal exemption, which increases from $3,950 in 2014 to
Investors’ confidence in U.S. public companies grows
Investors’ confidence in investing in U.S. public companies—and in audited financial information released by those companies—has risen to a seven-year high in 2014. According to the Center for Audit Quality’s (CAQ’s) Main Street Investor Survey, 80% of 1,049 investors surveyed said they have some, quite a bit, or a great
Asset protection of retirement funds after Clark
Protection for inherited IRAs and Roth IRAs is still possible after a Supreme Court decision denied their exemption from bankruptcy estates.
Supreme Court: Inherited IRAs are not retirement funds
The decision resolving a circuit split allows an inherited IRA to be included in a bankruptcy estate. The U.S. Supreme Court in Clark v. Rameker held that funds in an inherited individual retirement account (IRA) were not retirement funds that were exempt from a husband-and-wife debtors’ bankruptcy estate. Facts: The
QDROs demand the attention of CPAs
Expertise in qualified domestic relations orders and dividing retirement benefits in divorce can be a valuable accounting and tax specialty.
Electing to aggregate rental activities: Better late than never
Taxpayers that own several rental properties have to make many decisions when it comes to reporting income or loss from those properties. Among them is whether it would be more beneficial for the income or loss to be characterized as active rather than passive. If the taxpayer wants active characterization
One-IRA-rollover-a-year rule will be effective in 2015, IRS says
Following up on its promise earlier in the year to follow the Tax Court’s holding that the limit of one rollover per year applies on an aggregate basis and not on an IRA-by-IRA basis, the IRS withdrew a proposed regulation from 1981, Prop. Regs. Sec. 1.408-4(b)(4)(ii), which had provided otherwise
Risky business of serving the rich and famous
CPAs providing a menu of services to high-profile individuals are at risk of being blamed for a decline in the celebrity’s net worth.
The lure of a Sec. 475 election
A mark-to-market election can be very beneficial for securities or commodities traders. Here’s how to determine who qualifies for the election and who should make it.
IRA participants can purchase longevity annuities
Final regulations issued on Wednesday (T.D. 9673) permit individual retirement account (IRA) participants to enter into contracts for annuities that begin at an advanced age (often called longevity annuities), using a certain amount of their account balances, without having these amounts count for calculating required minimum distributions from the IRAs
Guidance issued on application of Windsor to retirement plans
Qualified plans must recognize same-sex marriages after the Windsor decision and must be amended, if need be, to make them conform to the results of that decision. Under guidance issued by the IRS, administrators of qualified retirement plans must recognize the same-sex spouses of legally married participants as of June
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How to replace running totals in Excel
Accountants routinely copy down formulas in Excel to track cumulative balances, such as cash flow and retained earnings, but there is a better way. This JofA Technology Q&A article shows the way with step-by-step instructions and a video walkthrough.
