1. Goal
  2. Types of Retirement Assets
    1. Goals
    2. Traditional IRA
    3. Roth IRA
    4. 401(k)
    5. Roth 401(k)
  3. Contribution Planning
    1. How High-Income Individual Can Bypass Income Limits for Roth IRA Contributions
  4. Roth Conversion Planning
  5. Distribution Planning
    1. The Goal of Distribution Planning
    2. Roth Distribution Planning
    3. Minimum Distributions for Inherited IRAs
  6. SECURE Act
  7. Alternatives to the Stretch IRA

Goal

The goal is to help clients get the most out of their retirement accounts.

Estate planners must know retirement asset rules because most middle class people will have some type of retirement asset and planning for these assets is important.

Working with retirement accounts requires much care. As one email from IRA experts puts it, “Retirement accounts are like eggshells; one misstep, and you may break its tax-advantaged status forever and create a significant taxable even for your clients or their heirs.”1

Types of Retirement Assets

Goals

The goal is to understand the key differences between retirement plans.

Traditional IRA

Roth IRA

401(k)

Roth 401(k)

Contribution Planning

How High-Income Individual Can Bypass Income Limits for Roth IRA Contributions

Roth Conversion Planning

How do you navigate in-plan Roth conversions?

How do you rollover from a Roth 401(k) to a Roth IRA?

Distribution Planning

The Goal of Distribution Planning

The goal of distribution planning is to take money out of a retirement plan without incurring penalties while paying the smallest amount of tax.

How do you avoid early distribution penalties?

Roth Distribution Planning

The goal for Roth distribution planning is to take money out of Roth IRAs and Roth 401(k)s tax and penalty-free – timing is the key.

What is the difference between Roth IRA and Roth 401(k) distributions?

How do you avoid inadvertently creating taxable Roth IRA distributions?

Which clients can take tax-free (qualified) Roth IRA distributions?

Which clients can take tax-free (qualified) Roth 401(k) distributions?

Tax-rules for Roth distributions have aggregation and ordering rules.

There are two five-year rules that apply to distributions from Roth IRA accounts: (1) Roth IRA 5-year forever clock, and (2) Roth IRA 5-year conversion clock. What is the difference?

How do withdrawals from a Roth 401(k) account work?

How do you avoid Roth 401(k) RMDs?

Minimum Distributions for Inherited IRAs

How does an heir of an inherited IRA take required minimum distributions in a way that maximizes tax-free savings?

SECURE Act

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Explain the various changes the SECURE Act made to the rules concerning retirement benefits

The SECURE Act eliminates stretch IRA by requiring benefits to be distributed within 10 years of the IRA owner’s death.

What is the 100% RMD problem?

What are planning opportunities for beneficiaries for inherited Roth accounts after the SECURE Act?

Alternatives to the Stretch IRA

using charitable remainder trusts

  1. Ed Slott, Sarah A. Brenner, Andy Ives & Ian Berger, Email: Roth Distribution Planning: How to take money out of Roth IRAs & Roth 401(k)s tax & penalty-free Pitfalls & Planning Strategies After the SECURE Act, Nov. 16, 2021. ↩