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New Greeting E-Cards

Posted on February 29, 2012 by Lisa Sloate

Did you know that Forefield Advisor offers over a dozen categories of greeting e-cards, including video cards, that advisors can send to their clients for events that occur throughout the year? We currently offer e-cards for Anniversary, Birthday, Christmas/Hanukkah, Congratulations, Easter, Fourth of July, Halloween, Labor Day, Mother’s Day/Father’s Day, National Estate Planning Awareness Week, New Year’s, Thank You, and Thanksgiving. And next week we’ll be adding three new card categories:

Appreciation
Daylight Savings Reminder (March 11)
St. Patrick’s Day

Each e-card has a customizable title and message field so you can create a personalized greeting for your clients. When you’re ready to send your e-card, you can access your saved contacts and groups, and each selected contact will receive an individual e-card from you via our e-mail servers. As with all our e-mail campaigns, you can choose to track each e-mail to gain insight into readership patterns. You can also identify any intended recipients who did not receive the e-mail due to opt-out or bounce issues.

And we have 17 new e-card categories coming later in 2012, including important dates in the financial planning world, so stay tuned!

Filed under: Product Features | Tagged: Greeting E-Cards | Leave a Comment »

Death and Taxes: An Update

Posted on February 28, 2012 by Dave Rando

As we venture into 2012, we are once again faced with uncertainty over the future of the federal gift and estate tax. The Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2012 brought us a $5,120,000 lifetime gift and estate tax exemption, a maximum tax rate of 35%, and portability of exemptions between spouses. But all of these rules are set to expire after December 31, 2012.

Unless new legislation is passed, on January 1, 2013, the lifetime gift and estate tax exemption drops to $1 million, the top gift and estate tax rate increases to 55%, and portability expires. What happens next will likely depend on the political landscape after the coming election.

We’ve created a flash client video alert (available next week) that you can use to inform your clients and prospects about the current state of gift and estate tax, what the future might hold, and some planning ideas to consider.

Most importantly, stay tuned to Forefield as we’ll keep you up-to-date with any new developments as they occur.

Filed under: Estate Planning, Finance, Investments, Tax | Tagged: Estate Planning, Estate Tax, gift tax | Leave a Comment »

Free Online U

Posted on July 14, 2011 by Lisa Sloate

Is this an idea whose time has finally come? University of the People (UoPeople) enrolled its first class of students in 2009, taking advantage of the growing body of free, open-access resources available online . To date, the tuition-free online institution has enrolled 1,000 students from over 100 countries, and it hopes to increase that number to 10,000 students in five years, which would make it financially sustainable according to its founder, Shai Reshef. UoPeople has just added some first rate college administrators and partners to its roster as it seeks American accreditation. Currently, it has two areas of study — business administration and computer science.

Interested applicants must have a high school diploma, be proficient in English, and pay an application fee of between $10 and $50. There is also a small fee for grading final exams, but otherwise UoPeople is totally free. And it doesn’t utilize the most sophisticated technology. Learning, for now, happens in text only. All students need is the ability to connect their laptops or mobile devices to a telecommunications network.

Stay tuned for the enrollment pattern for the new few years, as well as an update on whether UoPeople earns accreditation.

Filed under: Education | Tagged: online education | Leave a Comment »

Rules on 1035 exchanges of annuities relaxed

Posted on June 30, 2011 by Mary Frakes

Effective October 24, 2011, the IRS relaxes the rules governing Code Section 1035 tax-free partial exchanges of deferred annuities. A direct transfer of a portion of the cash surrender value of a deferred annuity to another annuity, regardless of whether the annuities are with the same or two different insurers, will be treated as a tax-free Section 1035 exchange if no distributions or surrenders are made from either annuity within 180 days of the transfer, except for amounts received as an annuity for a period certain of 10 years or longer, or for one or more lives. Also, subsequent transfers from either annuity intended to qualify as Section 1035 exchanges will not be considered distributions or surrenders for purposes of this ruling. Rev. Pro. 2011-38, 2011-30 IRB

Filed under: Finance | Tagged: 1035, annuities, IRS | Leave a Comment »

IRS increases standard mileage rates for second half of 2011

Posted on June 23, 2011 by Lisa Hartman

The IRS announced new standard mileage rates for July1 through December 31, 2011, as follows:

Business use of auto: 55.5 cents per mile may be deducted (up from 51 cents per mile for the first six months of 2011) if an auto is used for business purposes.

Charitable use of auto: 14 cents per mile may be deducted (remaining unchanged) if an auto is used to provide services to a charitable organization.

Medical use of auto: 23.5 cents per mile may be deducted (up from 19 cents per mile for the first six months of 2011) if an auto is used to obtain medical care (or for other deductible medical reasons).

Moving expense deduction: 23.5 cents per mile may be deducted (up from 19 cents per mile for the first six months of 2011) if an auto is used to effect a work-related move to a new home.

Filed under: Finance | Tagged: standard mileage rates | Leave a Comment »

The College Bubble – an Update

Posted on April 6, 2011 by Lisa Sloate

Almost two years ago on this blog, I posted an entry about whether the next bubble (after tech, housing, and stocks) would be in higher education. For years, I wrote, the financial sacrifices made by families to send their children to college seemed worth it. But I speculated that someday, when parents and students started questioning whether they were getting their money’s worth, the college bubble might just indeed be next.

Now, a recent book entitled Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses has created a PR firestorm for colleges with the assertion that a huge swath of undergraduate students demonstrate “no improvement in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing skills” after four years of college. Make that four years of very expensive college. The book has the higher education world buzzing. An excellent analysis of the trends that have converged to create this reality can be found in this article from the Chronicle of Higher Education.

In the meantime, while the college bubble hasn’t exactly burst, there’s evidence that is has serious cracks. The college debt bubble may be ready to explode, with more and more students buried under unmanageable debt loads. In addition, more families are weighing the value of a pricey college diploma, as articles with titles like “Is a College Education Worth the Price?” seemingly springing up every week. Based on surveys, more students than ever are choosing colleges based on price, and parents seem to be realizing that their bright, motivated son or daughter can get a very high quality education even if they don’t attend one of the elite colleges that competes for status every year in the infamous U.S. News and World Report rankings.

Filed under: Education | Tagged: college bubble, student debt | Leave a Comment »

The Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010

Posted on December 21, 2010 by James Walsh

On December 17, 2010, the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010 was signed into law. In addition to providing a 13-month extension of benefits for the long-term unemployed, the legislation includes a long-anticipated extension of the “Bush tax cuts” that were scheduled to expire on January 1, 2011. Other significant provisions include a new alternative minimum tax (AMT) “patch,” a major modification of the estate tax, and a new 1-year 2% employee Social Security payroll tax reduction.

For a summary of the legislation, see Forefield Update: The Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010 (subscription or free-trial account required).

Filed under: Tax | Tagged: "Bush tax cuts", AMT, Estate Tax, Legislation | Leave a Comment »

Must Act Now for GST Tax Savings Opportunity

Posted on December 20, 2010 by Lisa Hartman

The new tax bill has created a generation-skipping transfer (GST) tax savings opportunity, but you must act quickly because it expires at midnight on December 31, 2010. The GST tax rate for 2010 is 0%. That’s both for outright gifts and money put in a trust for the sole benefit of grandchildren (or other skip persons). Such transfers will incur only gift tax at 35% (to the extent that the donor’s $1 million gift tax exemption has been used), but will not incur any GST tax. On the subsequently filed gift tax return, the donor should elect to “opt out” of the automatic allocation of the $5 million GST tax exemption.

A provision in the new law, referred to as the “step-down” rule, will prevent the GST tax from being imposed on distributions from a trust for which the GST tax was already imposed.

Advisors may want to let clients know about this fleeting opportunity.

Filed under: Estate Planning, Finance | Tagged: Estate Planning, Generation-SKipping Transfer Tax | 2 Comments »

Breaking the cost barrier

Posted on November 10, 2010 by Lisa Sloate

What’s the significance of the number 100 in the 2010/2011 academic year? Any guesses? Here’s a hint: the number was 5 in 2008/2009 and 58 in 2009/2010.

According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, the number represents the number of colleges charging $50,000 or more for tuition, fees, room and board. And this year marks a milestone in that the first (and only) public college made the list — the University of California at Berkeley is charging out-of-state students $50,649 this year. The most expensive college on the list? Sarah Lawrence College in NY. It charges $57,384.

To see the full list, click here.

Filed under: Education | Tagged: college costs | Leave a Comment »

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