Take-Away: Anyone who has had even a remote connection with Michigan’s real property tax transfer rules will readily conclude that those rules are frequently counter-intuitive  and which often lead to ‘gotcha’ results. Yet another reported decision of the Michigan Court of Appeals confirmed that many of the ‘uncapping’ taxable value rules are nonsensical  lay-in-wait traps […]

Take-Away: The Uniform Fiduciary Principal and Income Act, not yet adopted in Michigan, changes the trustee’s treatment of distributions from IRAs and other qualified plans to a trust. It is important to remember that the terms of a trust instrument control the treatment and allocation of a retirement plan distribution to an irrevocable trust. In […]

Take-Away: If the SECURE Act becomes the law, required minimum distributions (RMDs) from inherited IRAs and qualified plan accounts will be dramatically curtailed, going from distributions over the beneficiary’s life expectancy to only ten years. While the proposed law would exempt disabled beneficiaries from the mandatory 10-year payout from the retirement account, those disabled beneficiaries […]

Take-Away: Individuals often confuse the distribution rules that are associated with IRAs with distributions from qualified plan accounts. Part of that confusion stems from the Department of Treasury’s vague definitions that can often lead to unexpected ‘gotcha’ income taxes and penalties. Background: A special rule with regard to IRAs is the ability to take a […]