2015 IRA deadlines are approaching

Gary Mitchell for The Meridian Star writes: Financially, many of us associate April with taxes – but we should also associate April with important IRA deadlines.

    — April 1 is the absolute deadline to take your first Required Mandatory Distribution (RMD) from your traditional IRA(s).

    — April 15 is the deadline for making annual contributions to a traditional or Roth IRA.

    Let’s discuss the contribution deadline first, and then the deadline for that first RMD (which affects only those IRA owners who turned 70? last year).

    The earlier you make your annual IRA contribution, the better. You can make a yearly Roth or traditional IRA contribution anytime between January 1 of the current year and April 15 of the next year. So the contribution window for 2014 is January 1, 2014- April 15, 2015. You can make your IRA contribution for 2015 anytime from January 1, 2015-April 15, 2016.

    You have more than 15 months to make your IRA contribution for a given year, but why wait? Savvy IRA owners contribute as early as they can to give those dollars more months to grow and compound. (After all, who wants less time to amass retirement savings?)

    You cut your income tax bill by contributing to a deductible traditional IRA. That’s because you are funding it with after-tax dollars. To get the full tax deduction for your 2015 traditional IRA contribution, you have to meet one or more of these financial conditions:

    — You aren’t eligible to participate in a workplace retirement plan.

    — You are eligible to participate in a workplace retirement plan, but you are a single filer or head of household with modified adjusted gross income of $61,000 or less. (Or if you file jointly with your spouse, your combined MAGI is $98,000 or less.)