• Mutual fund gifting. Client requests to gift mutual fund shares from a non-retirement account held at Commonwealth to an account held at another brokerage firm (or held directly at the fund company) must be received in good order by December 12, 2008.
• DTC requests. A client request for a 2008 charitable donation delivery via DTC out of a Commonwealth non-retirement account must be received in good order by 12:00 noon ET, December 26, 2008.
• Journal requests to IRAs. All 2008 contributions and transfers required before year-end via a journal must be received in good order by December 26, 2008. Please be mindful that all journals to or from an IRA may take up to 72 hours to process.
• Disbursement cutoffs. Requests for disbursements from a Commonwealth non-retirement account prior to year-end must be submitted in good order by the following deadlines:
  • Check requests    3:00 P.M. ET, December 31, 2008
  • Fed funds wires   3:30 P.M. ET, December 31, 2008
  • EFTs                     3:30 P.M. ET, December 30, 2008
• Disbursing and closing non-IRAs before year-end. To prevent accrued interest from crediting the account after January 1, 2009, please use the core fund closeout (CFCO) option available only for check disbursements. To successfully complete a CFCO, all positions must be sold and settled by December 29, and requests for all CFCOs must be submitted by 3:30 P.M. ET, December 30, 2008.
• Outgoing transfers. To be processed by December 31, 2008, 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 December 19, 2008. Please note that the average turnaround time for IRA transfers is five (5) business days from the date that the transfer was deemed in good order.  
  

Deadlines for IRAs

• Required minimum distributions (RMDs). All client requests to take 2008 IRA RMDs must be received by December 12, 2008. Requests received after this date will be processed on a best-efforts basis. Please note: The last day for a client to take an RMD is December 31, 2008; distributions cannot be backdated to reflect a previous tax year for any reason.
• Periodic distribution plans. To establish a periodic distribution plan for a 2008 distribution, the Premiere Select IRA Periodic Distribution Request Form must be received in good order by December 12, 2008. Please note: IRA periodic distribution plans cannot be established after December 26, 2008.
• Trades. All trades placed to fund an IRA distribution must settle by December 31, 2008. Failure to allow sufficient time for trade settlement may cause the distribution to occur in 2009.
• One-time distributions via electronic funds transfer (EFT). For an IRA distribution via EFT to post by December 31, 2008, it must be processed by December 30, 2008. Please remember that establishing a new EFT line takes approximately 10 days before it can be used.
• Charitable contributions from IRAs: Individuals 70&fraq12; or older in 2008 may make a charitable contribution directly from an IRA to a qualifying charity. This provision of the Pension Protection Act of 2006 is scheduled to be eliminated on December 31, 2009. A Premiere Select IRA One-Time Distribution Request Form to make a charitable contribution for 2008 must be received in good order by December 12, 2008.
• Roth conversions: Investors who meet eligibility for a 2008 tax year Roth conversion must make their conversion by December 31, 2008. To meet this deadline, a Premiere Select Roth IRA Conversion Form must be received in good order by December 12, 2008. Any Roth conversion form received after this date will be processed is on a best-efforts basis only.
  

Retirement periodic distribution plan schedule:

• Any existing IRA periodic distribution plan scheduled to pay out between December 5, 2008, and December 31, 2008, will be paid out by National Financial Services on December 5. This change in payout schedule will only occur for the month of December. Please note: Projected insufficient funds alert notifications will not reflect the date changes mentioned above; alert 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 on December 5 may generate alerts 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, 2008, whichever is later. 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, 2008. Please note: The partial distribution process applies to both periodic and one-time distributions and will be in effect for December only.
• 2009 periodic distribution plan set up. To ensure proper handling, please do not submit distribution requests for 2009 reporting until after December 31, 2008.  
  

Tax lot harvesting
The last day that a client can place a trade in an NFS Brokerage account to claim the gain/loss for the 2008 tax year is December 31, 2008. Please note: All trades—mutual funds and equities—must have a trade date of December 31, 2008, to count toward the 2008 tax year.

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 only. 

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