Count Our BlessingsCount Our Blessings

Michael J. Jones

There's a lot of good news from the frontlines of individual retirement accounts (IRAs). There was a parade of private letter rulings, many quite beneficial to taxpayers. Some rule changes also made life easier.

Alarming

First, though, one sour note: It may be wise to shop for a new custodian for your IRA — one whom you can trust to pay your IRA upon your death to the beneficiary you named on your IRA beneficiary form. Not every custodian will. A Vanguard beneficiary form warns: “If you have one or more existing IRAs and choose to complete this [beneficiary form], we will apply the new designation(s) to all your existing Vanguard IRAs of the same type.” As first reported in a recent Forbes magazine article, the result can b...