Keep or Toss: What to Do with Papers After Tax Season

The 2014 tax season is finally over! Congratulations for making it through! Now is the time to put up your feet, relax, catch up on your favorite shows, and spend time with your family. Sure, your office desk may be buried in two inches of IRS forms, receipts, pay stubs, and W-2s, but you’ll just push that to the back of your mind until next April, right?

Not necessarily.

Regular IRAs vs. Inherited IRAs

According to the Supreme Court, in a recent case involving the Bankruptcy Code’s exemption for retirement funds, a retirement account is not a retirement account if it is an inherited IRA and the owner is bankrupt.

Typically, when a person files for bankruptcy, funds they set aside for retirement can be exempt from the estate.

Taxpayer Bill of Rights

The IRS has adopted the Taxpayers Bill of Rights, a new list that will become a guidebook for taxpayers to help them understand what services and courtesies they are entitled to. A recent survey showed that most taxpayers didn’t even know they had specific rights before the IRS introduced the Taxpayer Bill of Rights.