Home > Glossary > Education Savings Account (ESA)
Education Savings Account (ESA)
Categories: Finance,
You can put up to $2,000 a year into a coverdell education savings account (ESA) that you establish in the name of a minor child. The assets in the account can be invested any way you choose.There is no limit on the number of accounts you can set up for different beneficiaries, but no more than a total of $2,000 can be contributed in a single beneficiary's name in any one year. If you choose, you may switch the beneficiary of an ESA to another member of the same extended family.Your contribution is not tax deductible. But any earnings that accumulate in the account can be withdrawn tax free if they're used to pay qualified educational expenses for the beneficiary until he or she reaches age 30. The costs can be incurred at any level, from elementary school through a graduate degree, or at a qualified post-secondary technical or vocational school. There are no restrictions on using ESA money in the same year the student uses other tax-free savings, or the student, parent, or guardian uses tax credits for educational expenses. But you can't take a credit for expenses you covered with tax-free withdrawals.To qualify to make a full $2,000 contribution to an ESA, your modified adjusted gross income (MAGI) must be $95,000 or less, and your right to make any contribution at all is phased out if your MAGI is $110,000 if you're a single taxpayer. The comparable range if you're married and file a joint return is $190,000, phased out at $220,000.
Featured term of the day
Definition / Meaning of
Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation And Amortization
Categories: Accounting, Fundamental Analysis,
EBITDA. An approximate measure of a company's operating cash flow based on data from the company's income statement. Calculated by looking at earnings before the deduction of interest expenses, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. This earnings measure is of particular interest in cases where companies have large amounts of fixed assets which are subject to heavy depreciation charges (such as manufacturing companies) or in the case where a company has a large amount of acquired intangible assets on its books and is thus subject to large amortization charges (such as a company that has purchased a brand or a company that has recently made a large acquisition). Since the distortionary accounting and financing effects on company earnings do not factor into EBIDTA, it is a good way of comparing companies within and across industries. This measure is also of interest to a company's creditors, since EBIDTA is essentially the income that a company has free for interest payments. In general, EBIDTA is a useful measure only for large companies with significant assets, and/or for companies with a significant amount of debt financing. It is rarely a useful measure for evaluating a small company with no significant loans. Sometimes also called operational cash flow.
Most popular terms
1. Mortgage Impairment Insurance2. Lead Time
3. Self-insured Retention (SIR)
4. Gross Margin
5. Highest And Best Use
6. Severance Pay
7. Stale Price Arbitrage
8. Preference Shares
9. Common Shares
10. Collateralized Mortgage Obligation (CMO)
Search a term
Browse by alphabet
A | B | C | D | E | F | G |
H | I | J | K | L | M | N |
O | P | Q | R | S | T | U |
V | W | X | Y | Z | # |
Browse by category
AccountingBanking
Bankruptcy Assistance
Bonds and Treasuries
Brokerages
Business and Management
Compliance and Governance
Credit and Debt
E-commerce
Economics
Estate Planning
Forex
Fraud
Fundamental Analysis
Futures
Global
Insurance
International Trade
Investing and Trading
Ipos
Legal
Loan and Mortgage
Mergers and Acquisitions
Mutual Funds
Operation and Production
Options
Patent
Personnel Management
Real Estate
Retirement and Pension
Statistics and Risk Management
Stocks
Strategies
Tax
Technical Analysis
Venture Capital