On June 24th, ProPublica’s Justin Elliott published an article entitled, Lord of the Roths: How Tech Mogul Peter Thiel Turned a Retirement Account for the Middle Class Into a $5 Billion Tax-Free Piggy Bank.  The article immediately received a lot of attention, with the term “Roth IRA” (of all things!) trending on Twitter.  I was particularly interested in … Continue reading [OPINION] Is Peter Thiel’s $5 billion Roth IRA legally valid? There are many reasons for doubt. →

An article was published in ProPublica today entitled, Lord of the Roths: How Tech Mogul Peter Thiel Turned a Retirement Account for the Middle Class Into a $5 Billion Tax-Free Piggy Bank (by Justin Elliott).  The general idea of the article is to call attention to extremely large Roth IRAs and how they have been used by ultra-high-net … Continue reading Warren Baker quoted in ProPublica Article on Peter Thiel’s $5 Billion Roth IRA →

The latest version of The Kiplinger Tax Letter has a good overview of some key considerations that can occur when an IRA owner takes a distribution out of his or her IRA prior to age 59 1/2. In addition to owing income tax on the IRA distribution (assuming a Roth IRA is not involved), a … Continue reading Red Flag: be careful when taking “early” IRA distributions – the IRS might check up on you →

As you have written about extensively on this blog and within other “self-directed IRA” related articles, one of the key legal matters that SDIRAs face is “unrelated business taxable income” (UBTI) – i.e., current tax from the SDIRA’s investments.  Generically speaking, UBTI occurs in two situations: (1) the SDIRA earns income (directly or through a … Continue reading Sorry, but UBTI losses from IRA (still!) don’t “flow through” to your individual tax return →

  There has been some rumbling (at least in my world) over the past few weeks regarding another Tax Court dealing with Roth IRAs and “excess contribution” issues.  The case, Block Developers, LLC v. Commissioner, involves four family members (father, mother, two children) that formed Roth IRAs and attempted to shift income that would otherwise … Continue reading Quoted in Forbes piece on Roth IRA/LLC case (Block Developers, LLC v. Commissioner) →

I am very pleased to announce that the article I co-authored with the esteemed Natalie B. Choate (“The Care and Feeding of Large IRAs” – Trusts & Estates magazine, December 2016) has won the Distinguished Author “Thought Leadership” Award.  More information regarding this award can be found here: http://www.wealthmanagement.com/estate-planning/2017-trusts-estates-distinguished-authors-awards Might need to make an appearance in NYC … Continue reading Winner Winner Chicken Dinner! →