• Mutual fund gifting. Client requests to gift mutual fund shares from their non-retirement Commonwealth account to an account held with another brokerage firm or directly with the respective fund company must be received in good order by Friday, December 14, 2007.
• DTC requests. If a client wishes to request a 2007 charitable donation delivery via DTC out of a non-retirement Commonwealth account, the request must be received in good order by 12:00 NOON ET on Thursday, December 27, 2007.
• Journal requests to IRAs. All 2007 contributions and transfers required before year-end via a journal from a non-retirement Commonwealth account must be received in good order by Wednesday, December 26, 2007. Please be mindful that all journals to an IRA may take up to 72 hours to process.
• Disbursement cutoffs. Requests for disbursements from a non-retirement Commonwealth account prior to year-end must be submitted in good order by the following time frames on Monday, December 31, 2007:
• Check Requests    3:00 P.M. ET
• Fed Funds Wires   3:30 P.M. ET
• EFTs                      3:30 P.M. ET
• Outgoing transfers. To be processed by Monday, December 31, 2007, and to avoid fees for the following year, client requests to transfer assets out of Commonwealth by year-end must be received in good order by Friday, December 21, 2007. Please note that the average turnaround time for IRA transfers is five (5) business days from the date the transfer was deemed in good order.  
  

Deadline for IRAs

• Required minimum distributions (RMDs). All client requests to take 2007 IRA RMDs must be received by Friday, December 14, 2007. Requests received after this date will be processed on a best-efforts basis. The last day for a client to take an RMD is Monday, December 31, 2007; distributions cannot be backdated to reflect a previous tax year for any reason.
• Periodic distribution plans. To establish a periodic distribution plan for a 2007 distribution, the Premiere Select^® IRA Periodic Distribution Request Form must be received in good order by Friday, December 14, 2007. IRA periodic distribution plans cannot be established after Friday, December 21, 2007.
• Trades. All trades placed to fund an IRA distribution must settle by Monday, December 31, 2007. Failure to allow sufficient time for trade settlement may cause the distribution to occur in 2008.
• One-time distributions via electronic funds transfer (EFT). For an IRA distribution via EFT to post by December 31, 2007, it must be processed by Friday, December 28, 2007. Please remember that establishing a new EFT line takes approximately 10 days to pre-note before it can be used. 
  

Retirement periodic distribution plan schedule:

• Any existing Premiere Select IRA periodic distribution plans scheduled to pay out between December 4, 2007, and December 31, 2007, will be paid out by National Financial Services on December 4, 2007. This change in the payout schedule will only occur for the month of December.

Please note: Projected insufficient funds e-mail notifications will not reflect the date changes mentioned above; the e-mail notifications will display the periodic distribution plan transaction as if it were scheduled to pay on the actual plan date. As a result, accounts in which distributions were already processed may generate e-mails unnecessarily.

• Insufficient funds. If the funds in the core account are insufficient to meet the requested or scheduled distribution amount, the distribution will pend for 15 business days or until December 31, 2007, whichever is greater. The full distribution amount will be paid if it becomes available at any time during the pending period. In addition, available partial payments will be forced out on December 31, 2007. The partial distribution process applies to both periodic and one-time distributions and will be in effect for December only.
  
• 2008 periodic distribution plan set up. To ensure proper handling, please do not submit distribution requests for 2008 reporting until after December 31, 2007.  
  

Summing it all up
We understand that year-end requests can be challenging, and we hope that the above information proves helpful. Please remember that requests received after these time frames will be processed on a best-efforts basis. 

If you have any questions, please contact us at 781-273-1400.