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25 Years of Sunwest Trust
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Sunwest Trust staff and family members at the Albuquerque Isotopes minor league baseball game
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October 2012 marks the 25th Anniversary of First Financial Escrow and the 15th anniversary of Sunwest Escrow. For those of you who don't know the whole story, First Financial Escrow was started in 1987. It all began in a tiny office with no escrow accounts and only one employee (Cindy Archuleta).
Over the years First Financial grew by accepting new accounts and buying accounts from small escrow companies around the state. In 1997, First Financial Escrow merged with the escrow department of Sunwest Bank to become Sunwest Escrow and moved their offices into the building that we are in now.
In December 2003, Sunwest Trust received its trust powers from the State of New Mexico Financial Institutions Division and became the only company in New Mexico with the ability to act as both an escrow agent and a custodian for Individual Retirement Accounts.
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Partial Roth Conversions
If you have a Traditional IRA, it is possible to convert it to a Roth IRA by paying the taxes on the money held in the Traditional and moving it into a Roth. However, this may create a quite large tax burden for the individual. There are no penalties for converting a Traditional IRA into a Roth, but the account holder must pay taxes on the money at their current tax rate.
One way to reduce the amount of taxes that you will have to pay is by doing partial conversions. You are allowed to convert as much or as little Traditional money to Roth as you want. For instance, let's say you have a $40,000 Traditional IRA that you wish to convert to a Roth. Instead of converting the full $40,000 and having to pay all the taxes in that year, you could convert just $10,000 per year for the next four years, reducing the amount of taxes you have to pay for the given year.
Before making any investment decisions, please make sure to speak with a CPA or tax professional.
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New procedure on State withholding for distributions
Due to difficulty with some states and how they process IRA distribution withholding, we have had to change our procedure. We will still give you the opportunity to do state withholding when you take an IRA distribution, but instead of sending the check to the state, we are now going to send it directly to the client.
Each state has a different procedure for how they accept and process IRA distribution withholding checks. Sunwest Trust will cut a check, made payable to your state, according to your withholding instructions. We will then send the check to you and you will be responsible for sending it to the appropriate department.
Rather than not allowing clients to do state withholding, we have decided that this is in the best interest of both our company and our clients.
If you have questions about withholding on an IRA distribution, please contact a CPA or tax professional.
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Employee Spotlight for October
Each month Sunwest Trust highlights one employee and the things they enjoy outside of the office. This month is Scott Jaynes from our Customer Service Dept. Enjoy watching Scott's video as he explains how he spends his time away from the desk.
 | | Spotlight on Scott |
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