I have a question about a 529 plan. We paid for my wife's post secondary education winter 2014 semester out of pocket in 2013 as required by the school. I stupidly forgot about 529 plans but it appears the MESP allows for qualified distributions to be paid to designated individuals instead of just institutions. Can I open and fund a 529 plan prior to April 2014 and count the contributions to the plan towards my 2013 payments? (Much like you can with an IRA.) Michigan allows for these contributions to be deducted from your taxable income
Thanks as always for this thread!
Then, I see no problem
Tax Experts: I am in need of some help.
I am looking to maximize my property tax deductions. We have 3 "Taxes" for our property.
1. County Tax
2. School Tax
3. Utility / Distr Tax (I have no idea what this is, thats what it's called on our statement)
I am completely at a loss as to what I can include as a deductible tax. #1 and #2 are obvious. But #3 I am unsure. I am also a bit weary, because that was included on our last
We recently changed who owned our mortgage, Bank of America sold it off to some other random company. On the bottom of the mortgage statement for BOA every year it said "Property Taxes" and gave us a simple number to put on our taxes. That isn't the case this time - and I think on the BOA statement it was including #3. So when we were going through our tax software and it asks how much in property taxes we had, I naturally just wrote the amount that was on the BOA statement.
Any clarification here for item #3 is greatly appreciated.
Sooo are you basically saying mark it as an exemption as per property tax? What does everyone else think?
CPA / Eaglekeeper mind tossing your opinion in?
I moved after the first of the year, this year. But before my W2 was issued. It has my old address on the W2, but I need to fill in to file?
And Xcobra...Hope E.K. is well and on a nice vacation.Thanks for the thread CPA. Great stuff in here.
Originally Posted by Exterous View Post
I have a question about a 529 plan. We paid for my wife's post secondary education winter 2014 semester out of pocket in 2013 as required by the school. I stupidly forgot about 529 plans but it appears the MESP allows for qualified distributions to be paid to designated individuals instead of just institutions. Can I open and fund a 529 plan prior to April 2014 and count the contributions to the plan towards my 2013 payments? (Much like you can with an IRA.) Michigan allows for these contributions to be deducted from your taxable income
Thanks as always for this thread!
I actually have no answer for this and did quite a bit of digging. I would think you'd only be able to claim expenses against the plan funds after you set it up. But then, that's just my logic. I would look to see if you qualify for the American Opportunity or the Lifetime Learning Credit.
CPA - have you encountered this before?
I need to contribute $1226 split between two new traditional IRA's ($1k/ea can be deducted for my wife and I, trying to get back into phase-out range for part of a deduction -- we would see ~39% of the $1226 back on my refund), each requiring a minimum $1k investment since they're going to be brand new. I have no interest in having a traditional IRA beyond situations like this, so I'm exploring my options and asking for help because I think I'm in over my head...
Option 1: Recharacterize $1k of my Roth IRA contributions for 2013 as traditional contributions. Questions: Could I immediately convert it back to Roth, still get the deduction for contributing to traditional, and hopefully have the tax added in on the conversion back to Roth below the line? Or are they both above the line? Would I need to wait until 2015 to convert back to Roth? IRS Pub 590 pages 30-32 seems relevant but I can't make sense of it because most of the examples are backwards of what I'm hoping to do.
Option 2: Make $1k/ea contributions to traditional IRAs out of checking account. Immediately convert to Roth, although again I'm unsure if I would take the tax hit relevant to 2013 filing now or if it would be relevant to 2014 when filing in 2015. Still unsure if this would all be above the line or split. If all above the line, becomes irrelevant.
Option 3: Make contributions to traditional IRA out of checking account. Roll mine into my TSP (non-taxable event) because I can, and find out if my wife could do the same to her 401k. Or just leave it all in a traditional IRA.
My goal is to minimize out of pocket expense while getting a portion of the deduction and somehow getting the money out of the traditional IRAs into either 401k/TSP or back into a Roth IRA...preferably reported for tax year 2013 rather than having to take a hit next year. Any ideas? Thanks!
I am not ignoring you, Xonim. This one is doing my head as well. I will try to look into it once I am home. But I believe that anything you deduct on your return for traditional IRAs and then decide to covert it to a Roth, is required to be included as income on your tax return again as the Roth is growing tax free (any Roth contributions are not deductible but any distributions when you retire are not taxable). I think you're trying to get a deduction on your return while being able to use the benefits of the Roth IRA. This is double-dipping it seems. Does my assessment sound about right?
Yeah, that's basically what I was thinking was going to happen, but I was hoping adding the conversion back in as income would go below the line. I'm going to guess it won't though (I've never done one).
Thanks for checking into it!
I am not sure what you are referring to when you say "below the line." The conversion to Roth would happen the year you do the conversion (i.e. 2014) and would be included as income on line 15b. You would still be able to contribute to the traditional IRA to get the deduction (provided you don't exceed the thresholds) in 2013 (if done by April 15).
This is the part I wasn't sure of. The PMI deduction eligibility is based on AGI, contributing to a traditional IRA would drop that low enough for us to get part of the deduction. I wasn't sure if the Roth conversion happened at the same step (as in, adding it back in would increase AGI and be of no benefit) or if the conversion happened between the AGI total and MAGI total (allowing us to get the PMI deduction but having no other affect on MAGI).
Since the conversion would be reported next year (for April 2015 filing), AND it would get added back into AGI instead of MAGI, it's not worth the headache for the amount we'd "save" this year. Thanks!
Has anyone seen arefund yet? My taxes were in on Jan 31 and so far it's still stuck in "Received" status.
Has anyone seen arefund yet? My taxes were in on Jan 31 and so far it's still stuck in "Received" status.
Hey Everyone,
I apologize for not knowing this piece of information but I purchased a house last year and paid a large portion in interest d on insurance premiums. However, I'm looking at my taxes prepared by "liberty tax" and it does not appear to show up anywhere.
I went online and it states I might not be eligible based off income? Just curious on which line it should be on and if it's possible not to be able to deduct?
I just want everyone to know that I don't have any bitcoin income to report.
So I rolled over an old 401K into my current employers plan in 2013. I totally forgot about it and already did my Federal taxes. I just got a 1099-R. Since it was a rollover into a qualified plan do I need to submit a corrected return?
You are correct that it's a rollover and no taxes are due. However, they will send a matching notice for the income. I would definitely amend to avoid the hassle of dealing with the IRS any further. My 2 cents.