NUA: Net Unrealized Appreciation

What is Net Unrealized Appreciation?

Do you have company stock in your 401(k)?

Don’t withdraw anything until you know these important tax strategies, because they could help you build a more tax efficient retirement portfolio.

NUA provides a tax shield from the company stock growth you’ve made in your 401(k) and reduces your future taxable income. So it is imperative to know that if you take money out of the account without an NUA strategy, you will never have access to this huge tax advantage.

There are no do-overs.

After watching this video and discovering the Net Unrealized Appreciation (NUA) tax strategy, it probably brings up more questions like:

How can I take advantage of NUA?
What should I avoid when implementing the NUA strategy?
How does the tax break work?
Am I a candidate?

That’s why we put together an actionable guide with tips on the Net Unrealized Appreciation tax strategy. Get your questions answered and dig deeper with our complimentary guide.

About The Guide

As with most IRA and tax strategies, the NUA strategy comes with a few “don’ts.” Any one of these could mean a loss of your ability to take advantage of the NUA tax benefit. In the guide, we cover the 12 things you need to avoid:

Don’t forget to consider NUA early when there is highly appreciated stock in an employer plan.
Don’t sell the stock too soon in the employer plan. Once it is sold you lose the original basis amount. Unless you can purchase the stock at a lower basis amount, you have lost the NUA opportunity.
Don’t roll over the employer stock to an IRA. The rollover is an irrevocable decision and you cannot use NUA on stock that is in an IRA.
Don’t take distributions from the employer plan in the years before you want to take advantage of the NUA strategy. Your distribution of the stock in a subsequent year will not qualify as a lump sum distribution.
Don’t forget that you can utilize the NUA strategy with only some of the stock in the employer plan. You do not have to use NUA with all the company stock.
Don’t forget to make sure that all amounts are distributed from the employer plan by year end. The year-end balance in the plan should be zero.

To get the whole list, and to answer the rest of your questions about this tax strategy, download your guide.

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