Understanding the Fine Print: Riders, Fees, and Taxes

The devil is always in the details, and with annuities, those details are found in the contract’s fine print. To be a smart consumer, you need to understand three key areas: optional add-ons called riders, the costs and fees involved, and how the income will be taxed. This is where asking pointed questions and reading carefully is your best defense.

What Are Annuity Riders?

Think of annuity riders as optional upgrades you can add to a basic annuity contract, much like adding heated seats to a new car. They provide extra benefits or guarantees, but they always come at an additional cost, which is usually deducted as an annual fee. Some common riders can be very valuable for retirees.

A Cost-of-Living Adjustment (COLA) rider, mentioned earlier, is designed to combat inflation risk. It will automatically increase your annual income payments by a set percentage, often 2% or 3%, or tie the increase to an inflation index like the Consumer Price Index. While this protects your purchasing power, it will significantly reduce your initial starting income.

A Guaranteed Lifetime Withdrawal Benefit (GLWB) rider is a popular feature on variable and fixed-indexed annuities. It allows you to withdraw a certain percentage of your initial investment each year for life, regardless of how the underlying investments perform. Even if your account value drops to zero due to poor market returns, the insurance company is obligated to continue your payments. This rider provides income security while still allowing your account to have some market exposure.

A death benefit rider ensures that if you pass away before receiving at least your initial investment back in payments, your beneficiary will receive the remainder. Different versions exist, some more generous than others, and they add to the overall cost of the annuity.

Decoding the Costs

Annuity fees can be complex and are not always obvious. It’s vital to ask for a complete breakdown of all potential charges. In a simple fixed annuity, the costs are built into the interest rate the company offers you. But in variable and indexed annuities, the fees are more explicit.

Mortality & Expense (M&E) Risk Charges: This is a fee specific to variable annuities that compensates the insurance company for the risks it takes, such as the death benefit guarantee and the lifetime income options. It typically ranges from 1% to 1.5% of your account value per year.

Administrative Fees: This is a flat annual fee or a small percentage to cover the costs of record-keeping and servicing your contract.

Underlying Fund Expenses: In a variable annuity, each sub-account (mutual fund) has its own management fee, just like any mutual fund you’d buy elsewhere. These fees can vary widely.

Rider Fees: As discussed, each optional rider you add will come with its own annual fee, often ranging from 0.5% to 1.5% per year.

When you add all these up, the total annual fees on a variable annuity with several riders can easily exceed 3%, which creates a high hurdle for your investments to overcome.

Annuities and Your Taxes: A Simple Look

How your annuity income is taxed depends on the source of the money you used to buy it. If you used pre-tax money, such as from a traditional 401(k) or IRA, it’s called a qualified annuity. In this case, 100% of the income you receive is taxable as ordinary income, because you never paid taxes on that money in the first place.

If you bought the annuity with after-tax money (from a savings account or a Roth IRA, for example), it’s a non-qualified annuity. Here, the tax treatment is more favorable. Each payment you receive is split into two parts. One part is a tax-free return of your original investment (your principal), and the other part is taxable earnings. The insurance company calculates this split, known as the “exclusion ratio,” for you.

It’s also critical to understand how this new income stream can affect the taxes you pay on your Social Security benefits. The IRS uses a formula called provisional income to determine this. Provisional income is your Modified Adjusted Gross Income (which includes annuity income, pension income, wages, and IRA withdrawals) plus any tax-exempt interest, plus one-half of your Social Security benefits.

Mini-Math Example: Provisional Income

Let’s look at a married couple, Tom and Jane, filing a joint tax return. They receive $44,000 per year in Social Security benefits. They also have an annuity that pays them $25,000 per year and they withdraw $15,000 from a traditional IRA. To calculate their provisional income, we take:

One-half of their Social Security benefits: $44,000 / 2 = $22,000.

Their other income (annuity plus IRA): $25,000 + $15,000 = $40,000.

Their provisional income is $22,000 + $40,000 = $62,000.

For the 2024 tax year, if a couple’s provisional income is over $44,000, up to 85% of their Social Security benefits may be subject to federal income tax. Because Tom and Jane’s $62,000 is well above this threshold, a significant portion of their Social Security will be taxable. It’s important to plan for this. You can ask your annuity provider to withhold taxes from your payment, and you can do the same for Social Security by filing a Form W-4V with the Social Security Administration. For the latest income thresholds, always check the official guidance on the IRS website.