Client Alert
Charitable Contributions From Your IRA: Tips and Traps
A really neat thing happens when you turn 70 and ½. Your IRAs essentially turn into donor advised funds if you don’t need all the money in them to make ends meet. Rather than withdraw money from your IRA to make charitable contributions, you can make them out of the IRA. So instead of an itemized deduction, you get an exclusion from adjusted gross income. For some people this might be a wash, but for most it probably isn’t. Besides the possibility of not being over the standard deduction threshold, there are a host of computations and thresholds that involve AGI. There are some things you need to watch out for, but first let’s go over the basics.
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How to Deal with Huge Tax Debt
The only thing scarier than owing Uncle Sam a lot in taxes is being unable to pay the bill. Luckily, the Internal Revenue Service has ways for you to whittle what you owe. Just make sure which method works for you, depending on such factors as the size of your tax debt and what you can afford to pay and when. Don’t panic. Here’s how individual taxpayers can proceed – and what to watch out for.
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Tax Research in an AI World
It has never been harder to do quality tax research than at any time in my 43-year career in tax accounting. In the 1980s, when I was part-time in the industry, there was no internet. Since I was part-time, I ordered Publications 1132, 17, and 334. The rest I found at the library. A few hearty souls might even remember when the post office had stacks of tax forms for the public. Once I went full-time for the 1989 tax season I needed more resources. CCH was my tool of choice. I still used IRS publications and the library. My handy reference guide of choice was, and still is, the QuickFinder. I never used TaxBook much, but it is another good resource for general answers. Then came the internet. The promise was that we would have the world at our fingertips. And for the large part we did, only we forgot some things we would rather keep at an arm’s length. The internet slowly allowed us to replace rooms in our office filled with tax guides and forms with online resources. Law offices and accounting firms often wrote tax articles on narrow tax subjects. Research was easier than ever.
Then came AI.
Trump Accounts Are Live. Are They Spectacular?
Trump Accounts (or § 530A accounts) went live via app on July 4, 2026. According to the Treasury Department, over six million accounts have been opened. As of Monday, July 6, 2026, parents and guardians of account beneficiaries could use the app to view their children’s accounts, fund the accounts, and access balances and financial education information. The Treasury Department designated BNY Mellon “as a financial agent of the U.S. government to support implementation of the new Trump Accounts program.” BNY, in partnership with Treasury, will manage the accounts and help to develop the app taxpayers can use to manage their accounts. Robinhood Securities, LLC is acting as the initial trustee and brokerage for the accounts.
Will AMT Make a Comeback After OBBBA?
Following Betteridge’s Law of Headlines, the answer to the question posed in the headline is, “no.” Actually — because we’re talking about taxes here — we can say the answer is never so definitive, so let’s change it to “probably not.” But it’s more complicated than it may seem.
