The IRS has announced additional annual inflation adjustments for more than 50 tax provisions for 2016, including the tax rate schedules and other tax changes.

Some retirement policy reform plans have called for capping the amount that could be contributed pretax to retirement accounts. A Republican plan put forward in 2014, for example, would have disallowed contributions to traditional IRAs and removed income limits on Roth IRA contributions.

The stretch IRA isn’t really a savings vehicle—it’s an estate-planning strategy for extending the life of an IRA across multiple generations, enabled by IRS interpretation of the tax code.

For the last several years, taxpayers have faced great uncertainty determining whether they can depend on tax incentives to help them lower taxes. These have become known as the “51 Tax Extenders”. Last December, Congress extended most of these provisions for one year retroactively to the beginning of 2014, but not going forward, so they expired again at the end of 2014.

The fourth quarter is often make-or-break time in sports. Likewise, tax-cutting steps you take in the last three months of the year can transform a financial plan into a bona fide winner.

Have you heard about the new "Achieve a Better Life Experience" (ABLE) accounts? They're tax ­favored savings accounts you can establish to set aside money to pay expenses for a disabled family member. Assets in ABLE accounts grow tax-free and withdrawals are nontaxable if used to pay qualified disability expenses.