Retirement
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Don’t Forget About Retirement Planning
What do you plan to live on after retirement? Consider whether your existing assets will generate the type and amount of return you’ll need.
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What is the Earnings Test?
If you plan on retiring early on social security it is important to understand the earnings test. We review the key details.
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Get Ready to Pay an Extra $595 of FICA tax
The SSA just announced an increase in the wage base. This may increase your FICA tax by $595.20.
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What are your Social Security Bend Points
As you approach retirement you wonder if you should pay in more FICA taxes. We go over the calculations. The answers may surprise you.
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Update to Social Security Post
Just a couple of items to add to our Social Security Post of yesterday. First, if the farmer’s spouse works outside of the farm and has made a substantial amount of money during their career, then it may not make sense for the farmer to pay any more into the system. A retired person is […]
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When It Pays to Increase Your Earnings
We get this question from farmers approaching retirement age a lot: “I have had very low income for most of my career and should I try to maximize my income as I approach retirement to increase my social security benefits” Chris Hesse, who is one of my partners at CliftonLarsonAllen, LLP had provided me with […]
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Annual Exclusion Update
I was talking with a reader from North Carolina today about our post from yesterday. He was not sure if the annual exclusion amount was or was not included in the lifetime. So, I have decided to do one more update on this subject. The first $13,000 ($14,000) of gifts that you give to everyone […]
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Annual Exclusion Does Not Eat Into Lifetime Exclusion.
We had a reader ask the following question: “Am I correct in that this accumulation of gifts during lifetime does not include those under the Annual Gift Tax Exclusion ($13,000)?” It seems like most of my posts lately deal with estate and gift taxes, but this is a very important subject and with the end […]
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What Does Unified Credit Mean?
We have gotten a few questions lately on how the lifetime gift and estate tax exclusion are tied together. In brief, transfers made during your lifetime are called gifts and reported on a gift tax return while transfers made at death are also a “gift”, but reported on an estate tax return. The gifts made during […]
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Another Nice Feature of a Living Trust
We have gotten some feedback on my previous post about revocable living trusts. One of the features of a living trust versus a will is that the trust can be set up to provide for “guardianship” of your affairs during your lifetime should you suddenly become disabled, etc. You can create other forms of documents that […]