CPA Blog

You still have time to set up your 2015 retirement plan

Details

Published: Wednesday, 16 December 2015 12:08

Written by Phillip Strickler, CPA.CITP

As a business owner, you shoulder many responsibilities — but have some perks as well. One benefit worth considering is setting up your own retirement plan that allows you to make larger contributions than you could as an employee.

For example, the maximum 2015 employee contribution to a 401(k) plan is $18,000 — $24,000 if you’re age 50 or older. Compare these limits to the amounts available to a business owner (that is, a “self-employed” individual) under:

• A profit-sharing plan, for which the 2015 contribution limit is $53,000 — $59,000 if you’re age 50 or older and the plan includes a 401(k) arrangement, or
• A defined benefit plan, for the maximum future annual benefit toward which 2015 contributions can be made is generally $210,000.

More good news: As long as you set up one of these plans by December 31, 2015, you can make deductible 2015 contributions to it until the 2016 due date of your 2015 tax return.

Additional rules and limits do apply. For instance, your employees generally must be allowed to participate in the plan, provided they meet the requirements for doing so.

Why you should contribute more to your 401(k) in 2015

Details

Published: Thursday, 10 December 2015 10:57

Written by Phillip Strickler, CPA.CITP

Contributing to a traditional employer-sponsored defined contribution plan, such as a 401(k), 403(b) or 457 plan, offers many benefits:

• Contributions are pretax, reducing your modified adjusted gross income (MAGI), which can also help you reduce or avoid exposure to the 3.8% net investment income tax.
• Plan assets can grow tax-deferred — meaning you pay no income tax until you take distributions.
• Your employer may match some or all of your contributions pretax.

For 2015, you can contribute up to $18,000. If your current contribution rate will leave you short of the limit, consider increasing your contribution rate through the end of the year. Because of tax-deferred compounding, boosting contributions sooner rather than later can have a significant impact on the size of your nest egg at retirement.

If you’ll be age 50 or older by December 31, you can also make “catch-up” contributions (up to $6,000 for 2015). So if you didn’t contribute much when you were younger, this may allow you to partially make up for lost time. Even if you did make significant contributions before age 50, catch-up contributions can still be beneficial, allowing you to further leverage the power of tax-deferred compounding.

© 2015

All income investments aren’t alike when it comes to taxes

Details

Published: Thursday, 03 December 2015 08:56

Written by Phillip Strickler, CPA.CITP

The tax treatment of investment income varies, and not just based on whether the income is in the form of dividends or interest. Qualified dividends are taxed at the favorable long-term capital gains tax rate (generally 15% or 20%) rather than at the applicable ordinary-income tax rate (which might be as high as 39.6%). Interest income generally is taxed at ordinary-income rates. So stocks that pay qualified dividends may be more attractive tax-wise than other income investments, such as CDs and taxable bonds.

But there are exceptions. For example, some dividends aren’t qualified and therefore are subject to ordinary-income rates, such as certain dividends from:

Read more ...

Accounting for digital assets in your estate plan

Details

Published: Monday, 30 November 2015 16:09

Written by Phillip Strickler, CPA.CITP

If you die without addressing your digital assets (such as online bank and brokerage accounts) in your estate plan, your loved ones or other representatives may not be able to access them without going to court — or, worse yet, may not even know they exist.

The first step in accounting for digital assets is to conduct an inventory, including any computers, servers or handheld devices where these assets are stored. Next, talk with your estate planning advisor about strategies for ensuring that your representatives have immediate access to these assets in the event something happens to you.

Although you might want to provide in your will for the disposition of certain digital assets, a will isn’t the place to list passwords or other confidential information, because a will is a public document. One solution is writing an informal letter to your executor or personal representative that lists important accounts, website addresses, usernames and passwords. Another option is to establish a master password that gives the representative access to a list of passwords for all your important accounts, either on your computer or through a Web-based “password vault.”