How are IRAs being changed?

[csziggy]

My husband has a traditional IRA (rolled over from his 401k) and we each have Roth IRAs. Recently we received letters from our financial advisor telling us that there are changes coming to IRAs. Ours are grandfathered in, but if we still wanted to make contributions to them, we had to set that up by June 8 of this year. There are some other details that we did not discuss since they don't apply to us but I started wondering.

What changes are being made to IRAs this year? Are they going to make it harder to contribute? What is going on with these changes?

[elleng]

1. Found this, but I have no experience:

https://www.fool.com/retirement/2016/12/17/heads-up-3-ira-changes-in-2017-youll-need-to-know.aspx

[csziggy]

3. Yeah, it makes no sense to me

Our financial advisor's firm sent out several pages of information from the IRS about the new rules. I read it, but it still doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Fortunately, the local office has a wonderful woman that explained what we need to know for our accounts. She knows exactly what questions to ask, can look at our accounts and explain if we need to do anything and what needs to be done.

But I started wondering what differences newer accounts will see.

For instance, my husband is trying to discuss with his sister the advantages of putting some of her inheritance from their mother into an IRA - but what we experienced with contributing to our IRAs might be different that what she can do now.

From the Motley Fool article, it seems to mostly be contribution amounts - but apparently grandfathered accounts will have many more limitations.

[Yonnie3]

2. Why don't you ask the financial advisor?

I know of no changes other than the adjustments to contributions and deduction rules.

[csziggy]

4. We've discussion in detail what will happen with our accounts

But I am wondering what will change for newer accounts that are not grandfathered in like our older ones will be.

My husband was giving advice to his sister about setting up a Roth IRA and I am concerned that if they have changed much he may be giving her poor recommendations.

[Yonnie3]

5. The only thing that I have found that includes grandfathering ..

http://money.usnews.com/money/retirement/iras/articles/2016-11-07/how-retirement-benefits-will-change-in-2017

It's a few paragraphs down and relates to the responsibilities of the financial advisor.

[csziggy]

6. OK, so maybe we should elect to not be grandfathered in

Because that would increase the responsibilities of our financial advisor to us and decrease the limitations on what we could do with our accounts, if I understand what the article says. I'll talk it over with my husband.

Thank you!

[Yonnie3]

7. Thinking about this and it troubles me

that the financial advisor's letter didn't spell out exactly why and how these accounts are different. It's the sort of thing that the new regulations require.

It is possible that there is some other reason for this grandfathering and new accounts than what I found in the article I linked above.

I'd still call the adviser and put him on the spot. I'd ask are there any other differences between account types.