Useful savings plans for the smallest businesses. Do you own a small business with a few employees? Are you self-employed? In either case, the SEP IRA may be the ideal low-cost, easily administered retirement savings plan for you. This is a simple pension plan using a traditional IRA. (SEP stands for Simplified Employee Pension.) It [...]

Health Savings Accounts offer you tax breaks and more. Why do people open up Health Savings Accounts in tandem with high-deductible insurance plans? Well, here are some of the compelling reasons why younger, healthier employees decide to have HSAs. #1: Tax-deductible contributions. These accounts are funded with pre-tax income. Your annual contribution limit to an [...]

It can reveal hidden flaws and help you improve the plan. Why do companies request specialized audits of their 401(k)s? After all, the standard annual audit that large companies routinely attach to Form 5500s may seem adequate. Yet a specialized audit may reveal things that have gone unnoticed for years, or conditions that should be [...]

A year? Seven years? It depends. You have probably heard that you should retain copies of your federal tax returns for 7 years. Is that true, or a myth? How long should you keep those quarterly and annual statements you get about your investment accounts? And how long should you keep bank statements before throwing [...]

The IRS has nearly doubled its examinations of returns from the richest taxpayers. IRS audits are up nearly 8% for the wealthiest Americans. This spring, the Internal Revenue Service released the 2010 IRS Data Book. Journalists and tax professionals looked inside and noticed a couple of eyebrow-raising statistics: The IRS audited 18.4% of 2010 tax [...]