Nondeductible Personal Interest Expense

The following is a partial list of  non business nondeductible  interest : car loan interest, credit card interest, bank overdraft fees, interest paid on form 1040 tax owed, interest on home equity debt over $100,000, interest paid on life insurance loans, and interest paid on loans for personal expenditures.

Roth IRAs and the Surviving Spouse

A surviving spouse as beneficiary has the option of treating the decedent's Roth IRA as his or her own. If such treatment is elected, then there are no required minimum distributions.  The spouse can even combine the inherited Roth IRA with their own Roth IRA. This is a correction to last week's tax blog.

Roth IRAs and Required Minimum Distributions

Required minimum distributions (RMDs) are not required for Roth IRAs while the participant is alive. It is one of the major advantages of a Roth vs. a regular IRA. However at death distributions become required for the beneficiary under the inherited IRA rules. A spouse has the option of rolling over the Roth IRA to his or her own Roth IRA which is the best option since the RMDs can be smaller, because they are determined by the uniform lifetime table instead of the single life table. Beneficiaries of inherited IRAs other than the spouse must use the single life table. Any amount of an RMD which is not distributed is subject to a 50% excess accumulation penalty.

No Will

If you die without a will in Georgia, the spouse's share cannot be less than 1/3. It could be 1/2 if there is only one child. Also this only applies to items not passing by title (joint account) or beneficiary like in a retirement account such as an IRA.  This is a correction to my previous post.