According to a number of U.S. Small Business Administration reports, roughly 90 percent of U.S. businesses are family firms. Yet, only 30 percent of these companies successfully transition from the first to the second generation, and a mere 15...
For perhaps the first time in tax preparation history, traditional and Roth individual retirement accounts (IRAs) must be screened for so-called wash sales thanks to Revenue Ruling 2008-5, Internal Revenue Bulletin 2008-3. The ruling has no...
The U.S. Supreme Court's unanimous decision in Knight v. Commissioner1 on Jan. 16, 2008, appears to resolve a controversy that has been raging since the early 1990s concerning whether a trust's investment advisory fees (IAFs) are subject to the 2...
Ever since the Internal Revenue Service issued Notice 2001-101 in January of 2001, planners who advise clients on their split-dollar life insurance arrangements have had to deal with a Byzantine set of rules that yield different answers depending...
By 2012, nearly $7 trillion of retirement plan assets will be rolled into individual retirement accounts (IRAs). Indeed, for most, the IRA will be their primary source of income during retirement. With the demise of traditional defined-benefit...
Many professionals view the funding of trusts as insignificant and easily accomplished particularly when there's a surviving spouse and no estate tax is due on the estate of the first spouse to die. But there are many tax-saving opportunities in...
Clearing Firms Matter to Advisors. In fact, one of the biggest deals in the independent b/d business last year hinged on whether the b/ds being sold could maintain their relationships with their old clearing firm. In March of 2007, Pac Life sold...
LPL Financial hired Christopher Poch as executive vice president of wealth management and CEO of the firm's trust services subsidiary, The Private Trust Company. Prior to joining LPL, Poch served as managing director of Smith Barney's Private...
Looks like there's quite a market for new wealth-management software tools. Some 75 percent of wealth managers are or very frustrated with their current software tools, according to a recent survey of North American wealth managers by NorthStar...
Q:My independent firm told me that I am responsible for reporting I get from my clients to the firm's compliance officer. Not surprisingly, since Labor Day, I've had more clients complaining (sometimes with notes or in emails, about the markets...
