Feb. 7, 2001 - Whoa.

If you’re in a position where you have to take an IRA distribution annually – Millian’s advice is to wait.

“There’s a proposed IRA distribution change that just came out Jan. 11. It means the required minimum distribution amounts might change. This is very important,” Millian says.

The Internal Revenue Service mandates that once you reach 70.5 years old, you must take an annual distribution from your Individual Retirement Account (IRA). Some people take the distribution as a lump sum annually; others take it in monthly amounts.

“You can wait until Dec. 31 to take your distribution, but I don’t think you’ll have to wait that long to find out which is best,” Millian says, referring to the proposed changes and the regulations now in place. “I’d expect some good advice by June.”

Millian says the reason for the proposed distribution is an attempt by the IRS to simplify things. “It’s just taken them a while to get around to an attempt to simplify things. They only put the current rules into place in 1987, you know.”

The proposed changes could, overall, be an advantage for those who have to take an IRA distribution. “The proposal, as I read it, could be a real benefit because the distribution could be smaller (meaning more of your money stays in the IRA). But it also depends on individual circumstances, and there are more restrictive rules, too.

“So the point is that this year, you can use either set of rules (the regulations in effect from 1987, or the proposed regulations for this year that are awaiting a decision. People have lots of time on this – there’s no need to rush it. I’d suggest they just wait and see what these proposals are, and then we can examine how much of a benefit they’ll be for each individual,” Millian adds.

Plus there’s an added benefit for keeping as much as possible in an IRA, whether or not the new proposal is approved. “If you don’t need the money in the IRA to live on, you want to leave it in the account. For the vast majority who die, it passes on to their beneficiary free from estate taxes,” Millian says.

Who is this Millian, anyway?
Millian M. Toms is a Certified Public Accountant who happily works out of her home in Royal Oak.

She’s been in the accounting business for 35 years, starting at Plante Moran, one of the nation’s premiere accounting and business advisory firms. However, one day Millian became sick.

She remembers the ride to the hospital – looking at the trees, seeing the color of the sky. All signs pointed to her not coming out of the hospital. Millian was having a very difficult time breathing, and at the time doctors thought she might have lung cancer.

Millian was sufficiently worried, to the degree that she summoned her attorney to the hospital so she could make out a will. Then doctors did exploratory surgery, which left her with a scar from about the center of her chest, around her left side and along her back, and found fibroid tumors, which were treated.

More research determined Millian had somehow inhaled chemicals that, in essence, seared and severely damaged her lungs. But, contrary to the earlier expectations of her doctors, she wasn’t going to die. Twenty-one days later she was home – breathing with difficulty, but home.

(It turns out the chemicals she inhaled came from products she used to remove wax from the floor of one of the rooms in her home.)

“It took a couple years to recover,” Millian says. “Up until that point I was in there with all of them at Plante Moran and I liked it – they only hired the best. But when you ride to the hospital thinking you won’t come out, it changes your whole life.”

So Millian became a Certified Public Accountant in 1974, and started her own business a year later. “I wanted to slow down and enjoy life. That’s nothing against the people at Plante Moran – as a matter of fact I’m still one of their clients and I have a really good relationship with them. But that can be an all-consuming job, and after what I’d been through I wanted to spend more time doing what I wanted to do.”

Today Millian still has scar tissue on her lungs, must use an inhaler and is going for lung therapy three times a week. But it doesn’t get her down at all.

“I love doing what I do. I care a lot about my clients. This isn’t at all about just making money. As long as I’m willing to do my best and I’m willing to take on the hard things and not run from them, I know things are OK,” Millian says.

She belongs to two accounting organizations that meet regularly. “They’re all small businesses like me. We stay current by meeting once a month over in the Washington Square Building conference room for a brown bag lunch. If I don’t know the answer to something, I call a colleague, and they call me a lot, too.

If Millian could get just one piece of advice out, in context and without interruption, it would be this:

“Get the professional help you need now. Don’t wait until you’re in trouble.

“Small businesses – they’re afraid. They’re afraid of the unknown and Uncle Sam. They’re afraid of taxes and the IRS, so some of them go for years without knowing what to file, and then not filing anything. They think because nothing happens in the first year or two, that they got away with it.

“But while the IRS doesn’t work that quickly, it does work, and usually catches up to people after four or five years, and by that time the small businesses owe so much that it can bankrupt them. The point is that they need to reach out and get the help they need now. Instead, they don’t take care of the things they should, end up paying them anyway, plus huge legal fees on top of it.”

Millian M. Toms is a Royal Oak-based CPA and business advisor. She is also an active member of the community including The Optimists and Greater Royal Oak Chamber of Commerce. 

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