Taxpayers who take distributions from retirement plans prior to attaining age 59 1/2 have to deal with a confusing set of rules of which distributions are and are not eligible to escape the 10% addition to tax under §72(t).  Two recent cases illustrate both the traps that exist for the unwary and how a taxpayer managed to convince the Tax Court he qualified for an exception from the penalty despite IRS arguments to the contrary.The materials for the podcast can be downloaded from http://edzollars.com/2006-05-13_Premature.pdf.The podcast is sponsored by Leimberg Information Services, located on the web at http://www.leimbergservices.com.