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Defusing the IRA Timebomb:

Avoid Losing 75% of Your IRA to Taxes

May 22, 2024  |  2:00PM - 3:30PM  |  Los Altos Community Center

Retirement accounts make up a large part of many people’s estates; unfortunately, many IRA owners and their advisors are not familiar with the complicated tax laws regarding distributions from retirement accounts.

Why is this? Because retirement accounts are different!

Therefore, you must separate the retirement accounts from the rest of your estate and establish a proper plan for distribution of these assets. Although many individuals have established complex planning strategies, many have not addressed the planning issues of IRA and other retirement plans. IRAs are often referred to as “the Missing Estate Plan” because the rules can be complex  and therefore it is easy to cause mistakes, and careful planning is necessary to avoid the Triple Tax syndrome of possibly losing 75% of your IRA value to taxes.

At this live workshop, John Lau will show you:

  • How IRAs are different from other accounts and what are their impacts
  • How the SECURE Act has changed beneficiary planning for retirement accounts
  • How inheriting an IRA account does not automatically stretch out the 10-year distribution unless your beneficiary does one more thing…
  • How an IRA Beneficiary Trust can help save income and estate tax
  • How a Charitable Remainder Trust IRA beneficiary can help stretch out distributions
  • How relocating your IRA to life insurance may parlay your retirement accounts to a large tax-free estate
  • Whether to Convert or not to convert (to Roth IRA)
  • And more

Presented in collaboration with the Los Altos Community Center.

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About John Lau, CPA, CFP® 

John is a Principal and Managing Director at Robertson Stephens’ San Ramon and Burlingame offices in the San Francisco Bay Area. John and his team specialize in retirement distribution planning, serving clients in or near retirement. John’s team uses a total-solution approach to planning, including income tax reduction, estate conservation, portfolio management, and retirement distribution planning. John is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and a Certified Financial Planner (CFP®) professional. John is a public speaker on financial topics and has authored numerous financial books and booklets, including Winning the Retirement Race Between Time and Money; What Should I Do Before Anything Happens to Me; Suddenly Single; IRA Survival Guide After the SECURE Act, and more.


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