IRA Ownership

Let’s talk about who really owns your IRA. You might say Art, my name is on the statement. I’m the one that put the money in there or my company maybe matched some of it. Let’s back up for a second though. Who really owns the whole IRA? And I’m talking about traditional, pre-tax 401Ks, IRAs, that sort of stuff. Well you do as the owner, as a contributor to that. Your company maybe put matching funds in at some point and your name is on the statement. But you know who’s name is not on the statement that likely is an owner or likely is going to get a piece of that? The IRS, right, the Uncle Sam. They’re going to likely as you start taking distributions, going to get pieces of that in the form of taxes, right? So when you have, let’s run through an example. Let’s say you have a $500K 401K account and you’re excited because you’re going into retirement. You’ve got Social Security and maybe you’re fortunate enough to have a pension. And now you’ve got this IRA that you’re going to start taking some money out of for you know filling in the income gap. As you’re taking those distributions, depending upon your total income, there’s going to be some percentage of tax taken out, right? So that $500K that’s coming out, isn’t all yours. Likely, if you think of it like a piece of a pie there’s a sliver of that pie, depending upon your tax rate, how big a piece they’re going to get that isn’t all yours. Let’s stop for a second because sometimes it makes it easier to look at it in one whole picture of one time. Let’s say typically no one would advice, but let’s say you had to for some reason take out all $500K at one time. So it’s obviously going to put you up a significant tax brackets with $500K, plus maybe your other incomes. What piece of that are you going to get and what piece is Uncle Sam going to get? You’re not going to get all $500K, right? There’s going to be some federal taxes, likely some state taxes depending upon which state you’re in. Let’s assume you’re here in Michigan, you know 4.25% state tax. So some maybe 20%-30% federal tax depending upon other income. Your state 4.25%. So as much as 30% plus could be given to the IRS. So not all $500K of that is yours. And that can be set over time as well depending upon your tax strategies. So when you get your statement and you look at that statement and say wow, I’ve got $500K or I’ve got $700K or whatever that number is you have. Remember, that’s pre-taxed. Likely, it’s not all your money. There’s going to be a portion of that as you’re coming out. Once again going back to that detailed retirement plan, having a tax efficient strategy on the most efficient way to get that money out of that plan can be helpful. Because even if you can make it better by just a couple percent over time, that could be a significant difference in your overall success of your plan as you build that out. If you don’t know how much of it is actually yours and what your tax would look like in retirement, give us a call. We’d love to walk through that with you. Have some of our tax experts take a look and build that out for you along with our financial advising team so you can plan to retire well.