New Tax Change Makes Annuity Funded Long-term Care Policies Even Better
For some time, insurance buyers have been able to buy annuities or life insurance that included a long-term care insurance. Here is how the policies generally work. In many cases, some of the earnings from the cash value in the life policy or the cash value of the annuity are used to pay premiums for long-term care insurance protection. A hypothetical example might look like this:
Our hypothetical investor, a 65-year-old man, pays a premium of $50,000. He obtains a life policy with a death benefit of $74,718. He also gets long-term care insurance amounting to $149,436, to be used at a rate of $3,133 monthly, when the policy owner qualifies for long-term care benefits. So far, this may look attractive because there are no annual out of pocket premiums—the only payment is the single payment of $50,000. Additionally, assuming that there are no prior withdrawals or payments for long term care insurance benefits, the insurance company will guarantee the $50,000 which can be withdrawn at any time . |
The $50,000 cash value is credited with interest each year at a gross and guaranteed minimum rate of 4%. But from the accumulated cash value, deductions are made to pay for the life insurance and the long-term care insurance. Currently, the deductions from the policy to pay for the long-term care insurance are taxable to the policy owner because the IRS views them as payments from the life policy (and because this policy was purchased with one large premium, IRA classifies it as a modified endowment contract and taxes the first withdrawals as ordinary income).
Good news. The Congress would like everyone to have long-term care insurance protection so that as of January 1, 2010, these combination policies where a life policy or annuity is funding the long-term care insurance will no longer generate taxable income to the owner. The change applies to policies purchased after 1996. However, through 2009, owners of these combination policies will need to make the tax payments each year. Also, one may consummate a tax-free exchange of an annuity or life policy after 2009 for one of these combination policies.
If you have been interested in long-term care insurance protection without annual out of pocket costs, these single premium annuity or life policies may be the answer.
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Contributed by Javelin Marketing
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Tags: long term care insurance
January 29th, 2010 at 1:42 am
Paying into a life insurance is mainly about investing in what could happen in the future be in paying for loved one after you have gone or if you get seriously ill and need a big chunk of money for care. When purchasing this insurance it is always best to protect it your interest so there are no complications or loop holes to for anyone to stop you getting any money that you have invest and entitled to.
Insurance companies have teams of people who sole job is to work and find any problems in your policy or claims for to deny you cover and save companies money which is a bad premise and should give more policy holders more of an incentive to get insurance protection as there is less risk to your cover having the protection.