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IRA $100,000 Charitable Withdrawal through 12/31/14

By:  Julie Frey.

If you are chairtably inclined and wish to use some of your IRA to fund your charitable donations, the Senate has just passed an extension of some “tax extenders” that were in place in 2013.  It is anticipated that President Obama will sign the bill in the next few days.  What does this mean for you?  It means that if you are 70 1/2 years of age or older you can take up to $100,000 in tax-free distributions from your IRA in 2014 provided that the funds withdrawn are given to an eligible public charity.  While one cannot also take a deduction for that contribution, the money won’t count as income.  Once President Obama signs the bill into law, you will only have a few weeks to act, so contact your advisors now to alert them to your intention to make the withdraw and charitable contribution.  The ability to do this ends on December 31, 2014. read more

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Treasury Department Takes Aim at Corporate Inversions

By:  Amanda Wilson

A few weeks ago, I posted about the increasing popularity of U.S. corporations moving their headquarters abroad, as illustrated most recently by the proposed Burger King/Tim Hortons merger. This type of transaction is referred to as a corporate inversion, which is a transaction in which a U.S. based multinational corporation restructures so that its U.S. parent is now owned by a foreign parent corporation (a Canadian corporation in the Burger King/Tim Hortons proposed acquisition). A corporate inversion has gained increasing popularity because of the high U.S. corporate tax rate and the desire to minimize U.S. taxes. For obvious reasons, the Obama administration does not like corporate inversions and wants to stop them. read more