Good morning. My name is Chad Taylor, managing partner with MDT Financial Advisors here in Houston, Texas. Today is Thursday, January the 11th, 2024. And so I wanted to hope, wish everybody a happy New year. Hope your year's starting off. Great. And I wanted to go over something that it's always kind of good to a reminder at the beginning of the year, especially if you're in that required minimum distribution phase of taking money out of your retirement accounts. And what I wanted to go over today, and I know we've done videos on it in the past, but it's always a good reminder, our qualified charitable distributions are qds. And so what qds are, they're kind of a unique tax strategy for those over the age of 70 and a half that have an IRA or an inherited IRA. So if you're over the age of 70 and a half, you have an IRA or inherited IRA, you can take advantage of these qcd.

And essentially what it is, is you're able to send, it used to be a hundred thousand dollars. Now in 2024, it's been indexed for inflation up to $105,000 to any 5 0 1 C3 nonprofit without federal income tax consequences to you when what's good about it is the money comes out above the line is what they call it. And so it's really good if you're charitably inclined and you make charitable contributions, but you may not have enough to itemize because in that case you're using the standard deduction and you get that QCD out of your taxable estate above that, and you still can use the standard deduction. The I a distribution must be made payable to the charity, so it can't be made payable to you and then you write a check to the charity. It has to be made payable to the charity and it may satisfy your required minimum distribution.

So if you remember, and it's getting older and older now, but it used to be for years that the required minimum distribution started at age 70 and a half. And that's why the QCD is at that age and they just left it there. Although the required minimum distribution age is now a little bit older, it's not included in your adjusted gross income or your A GI in 2024, like I mentioned, the maximum amount is $105,000 per individual. It may satisfy your RMD or even exceed it, and it needs to be made payable from the IRA custodian to the nonprofit as I mentioned, can't be paid payable to you first and then you write a check. It has to be payable to the nonprofit. Now the money can be mailed from the IRA custodian to the nonprofit for you, or it can be mailed to you and then you're responsible for handing it over so you know that it gets there.

That part doesn't matter as long as it's made payable to the nonprofit. That's the key part of that. So whether you mail it directly from your IRA to the nonprofit or it comes to you first made payable to the nonprofit, either one of those is fine. Generally you cannot do that with SEP IRAs or Simple IRAs or Qualified Retirement Plans or qps. Those do not qualify that. And if you want to use the QCD to satisfy the RMD, make sure you take it and do that before you take any other distributions because the rules are that it recognizes the RMD first. So there's a lot of different little nuances to it. It's always good to check with your tax prepared to make sure that it works with your situation. If you would like a white paper on this, let us know and we can get you a copy of it. But if you're over the age of 70 charitably inclined, do charitable donations anyway, it may not hurt to look at qcd S Okay. If you have any questions, let me know. Again, I hope you're having a happy New Year, and please let us know if there's anything we can do to help.