College Savings Iowa: 2014 Tax Year Contribution Deadline

Many Foster Group clients use Iowa’s 529 Plan, College Savings Iowa (CSI), to save for their children’s and grandchildren’s future college education expenses. CSI remains an excellent option for Iowa residents to utilize as it provides both immediate tax deductions for certain contributions and virtually tax-free accumulation for future qualified higher education expenses. In addition, Vanguard as the investment provider, creates high-quality, low-cost investment portfolios for program participants.

For the 2014 tax year, ending December 31, 2014, participants can deduct contributions of up to $3,098 per account. Each parent (or grandparent) may have an account for each child. As an example, a family of four with two parents and two children may open a total of four accounts, two accounts per child, one for each parent. This would allow Iowa state tax deductible contributions of $12,392 (4 x $3,098) for 2014.

If you have accounts already opened, but have not contributed the full $3,098 to each account in 2014, you still have the opportunity to do so as long as the contributions are made by December 31, 2014. If you’re not sure how much you have contributed for 2014, you may access this information at www.collegesavingsiowa.com.  Once you have logged in, click on the account number associated with each child and scroll down to “Year-to-Date Contributions” where you’ll see the total contributed for each tax year that the account has been open. If you don’t remember your user name and password, or you would rather just talk with a representative, the phone number for CSI is 888-672-9116 (toll-free).