12% Roth Conversion

The 12% Roth Conversion

Posted On February 23, 2020 By Scott Stratton, CFP(R), CFA In Retirement Planning /  

If you make less than $117,150, you’ve got to look into the 12% Roth Conversion. For a married couple, the 12% Federal Income tax rate goes all the way up to $89,450 for 2023. That’s taxable income. With a standard deduction of $27,700, a couple could make up to $117,150 and remain in the 12% bracket. Above those amounts, the tax rate jumps to 22%.

For those who are in the 12% bracket, consider converting part of your Traditional IRA to a Roth IRA each year. Convert only the amount which will keep you under the 12% limits. For example, if you have joint income of $70,000, you could convert up to $47,150 this year.

This will require paying some taxes today. But paying 12% now is a great deal. Once in the Roth, your money will be growing tax-free. There will be no Required Minimum Distributions on a Roth and your heirs can even inherit the Roth tax-free. Don’t forget that today’s tax rates are going to sunset after 2025 and the old rates will return. At 12%, a $47,150 Roth conversion would cost only $5,658 in additional taxes this year. And then you will have that $47,150 growing with no future tax liabilities.

Take Advantage of the 12% Rate

If you have a large IRA or 401(k), the 12% rate is highly valuable. The key to the 12% Roth Conversion is doing it repeatedly over a period of years. If you have eight years where you can convert $40,000 a year, that’s going to move $320,000 into a tax-free account. Once you start Required Minimum Distributions, you really won’t have a choice about taking those taxable distributions. I have so many clients who don’t need their RMDs, but are forced to take out their money.

Here are some scenarios to consider where you might be in the 12% bracket:

  1. One spouse is laid off temporarily, on sabbatical, or taking care of young children. Use those lower income years to make a Roth Conversion. This could be at any age.
  2. One spouse has retired, the other is still working. If that gets you into the 12% bracket, make a conversion.
  3. Retiring in your 60’s? Hold off on Social Security so you can make Roth Conversions. Once you are 73, you will have both RMDs and Social Security. It is amazing how many people in their seventies are getting taxed on over $117,150 a year once they have SS and RMDs! These folks wish they had done Conversions earlier, because after 73 they are now in the 22% or 24% bracket.

Retiring Soon?

Considering retirement? Let’s say you will receive a $50,000 pension at age 65. (You are lucky to have such a pension – most workers do not!) For a married couple, that’s only $22,300 in taxable income after the standard deduction. Hold off on your Social Security and access your cash and bond holdings in a taxable account. Your Social Security benefit will grow by 8% each year. Spend the cash or bonds and defer the Social Security.

Now you can convert $67,000 a year into your Roth from age 65 to 70. That will move $335,000 from your Traditional IRA to a Roth. Yes, that will be taxable at 12%. But at age 73, you will have a lower RMD – $12,641 less in just the first year.

When you do need the money after 73, you will be able to access your Roth tax-free. And at that age, with Social Security and RMDs, it’s possible you will now be in the 22% tax bracket. I have some clients in their seventies who are “making” over $250,000 a year and are now subject to the Medicare Surtax. Don’t think taxes go away when you stop working!

Read more: Can You Reduce Required Minimum Distributions?

How to Convert

The key is to know when you are in the 12% bracket and calculate how much to convert to a Roth each year. The 12% bracket is a gift. Your taxes will never be lower than that, in my opinion. If you agree with that statement, you should be doing partial conversions each year. Whether that is $5,000 or $50,000, convert as much as you can in the 12% zone. You will need to be able to pay the taxes each year. You may want to increase your withholding at work or make quarterly estimated payments to avoid an underpayment penalty.

What if you accidentally convert too much and exceed the 12% limit? Don’t worry. It will have no impact on the taxes you pay up to the limit. If you exceed the bracket by $1,000, only that last $1,000 will be taxed at the higher 22% rate. Conversions are permanent. It used to be you could undo a conversion with a “recharacterization”, but that has been eliminated by the IRS.

While I’ve focused on folks in the 12% bracket, a Conversion can also be beneficial for those in the 22% bracket. The 22% bracket for a married couple is from $89,451 to $190,750 taxable income (2023). If you are going to be in the same bracket (or higher) in your seventies, then pre-paying the taxes today may still be a good idea. This will allow additional flexibility later by having lower RMDs. Plus, a 22% tax rate today might become 25% or higher after 2025! Better to pay 22% now on a lower amount than 25% later on an account which has grown.

A Roth Conversion is taxable in the year it occurs. In other words, you have to do it before December 31. A lot of tax professionals are not discussing Roth Conversions if they focus solely on minimizing your taxes paid in the previous year. But what if you want to minimize your taxes over the rest of your life? Consider each year you are eligible for a 12% Roth Conversion. Also, if you are working and in the 12% bracket, maybe you should be looking at the Roth 401(k) rather than the Traditional option.

Where to start? Contact me and we will go over your tax return, wage stubs, and your investment statements. From there, we can help you with your personalized Roth Conversion strategy.

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Roth Conversions Under the New Tax Law

Posted On December 2, 2018 By Scott Stratton, CFP(R), CFA In Retirement Planning, Tax Strategies /  

Everybody loves free stuff, and investing, we love the tax-free growth offered by a Roth IRA. 2018 may be a good year to convert part of your Traditional IRA to Roth IRA, using a Roth Conversion. In a Roth Conversion, you move money from your Traditional IRA to a Roth IRA by paying income taxes on this amount. After it’s in the Roth, it grows tax-free.

Why do this in 2018? The new tax cuts this year have a sunset and will expire after 2025. While I’d love for Washington to extend these tax cuts, with our annual deficits exploding and total debt growing at an unprecedented rate, it seems unavoidable that we will have to raise taxes in the future. I have no idea when this might happen, but as the law stands today, the new tax rates will go back up in 2026.

That gives us a window of 8 years to do Roth conversions at a lower tax rate. In 2018, you may have a number of funds which are down, such as Value, or International stocks, or Emerging Markets. Perhaps you want to keep those positions as part of your diversified portfolio in the hope that they will recover in the future.

Having a combination of both lower tax rates for 2018 and some positions being down, means that converting your shares of a mutual fund or ETF will cost less today than it might in the future. You do not have to convert your entire Traditional IRA, you can choose how much you want to move to your Roth.

Who is a good candidate for a Roth Conversion?

1. You have enough cash available to pay the taxes this year on the amount you want to convert. If you are in the 22% tax bracket and want to convert $15,000, that will cost you $3,300 in additional taxes. That’s painful, but it saves your from having to pay taxes later, when the account has perhaps grown to $30,000 or $45,000. Think of a conversion as the opportunity to pre-pay your taxes today rather than defer for later.

2. You will be in the same or higher tax bracket in retirement. Consider what income level you will have in retirement. If you are planning to work after age 70 1/2 or have a lot of passive income that will continue, it is entirely possible you will stay in the same tax bracket. If you are going to be in a lower tax bracket, you would probably be better off not doing the conversion and waiting to take withdrawals after you are retired.

3. You don’t want or need to take Required Minimum Distributions and/or you plan to leave your IRA to your kids who are in the same or higher tax bracket as you. In other words, if you don’t even need your IRA for retirement income, doing a Roth Conversion will allow this account will grow tax-free. There are no RMDs for a Roth IRA. A Roth passes tax-free to your heirs.

One exception: if you plan to leave your IRA to a charity, do NOT do a Roth Conversion. A charity would not pay any taxes on receiving your Traditional IRA, so you are wasting your money if you do a conversion and then leave the Roth to a charity.

The smartest way to do a Roth Conversion is to make sure you stay within your current tax bracket. If you are in the 24% bracket and have another $13,000 that you could earn without going into the next bracket, then make sure your conversion stays under this amount. That’s why we want to talk about conversions in 2018, so you can use the 8 year window of lower taxes to make smaller conversions.

2018 Marginal Tax Brackets (this is based on your taxable income, in other words, after your standard or itemized deductions.)

Single Married filing Jointly
10% $0-$9,525 $0-$19,050
12% $9,526-$38,700 $19,501-$77,400
22% $38,701-$82,500 $77,401-$165,000
24% $82,501-$157,500 $165,001-$315,000
32% $157,501-$200,000 $315,001-$400,000
35% $200,001-$500,000 $400,001-$600,000
37% $500,001 or more $600,001 or more

On top of these taxes, remember that there is an additional 3.8% Medicare Surtax on investment income over $200,000 single, or $250,000 married. While the conversion is treated as ordinary income, not investment income, a conversion could cause other investment income to become subject to the 3.8% tax if the conversion pushes your total income above the $200,000 or $250,000 thresholds.

You used to be able to undo a Roth Conversion if you changed your mind, or if the fund went down. This was called a Recharacterization. This is no longer allowed as of 2018 under the new tax law. Now, when you make a Roth Conversion, it is permanent. So make sure you do your homework first!

Thinking about a Conversion? Want to reduce your future taxes and give yourself a pool of tax-free funds? Let’s look at your anticipated tax liability under the new tax brackets and see what makes sense your your situation. Email or call for a free consultation.

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Five Things To Do When The Market Is Down

Posted On February 15, 2016 By Admin In Behavioral Finance, Portfolio Management /  

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When the market is down, it hurts to look at your portfolio and see your account values dropping. And when we experience pain, we feel the need to do something. Unfortunately, the knee-jerk reaction to sell everything almost always ends up being the wrong move, a fact which although obvious in hindsight, is nevertheless a very tempting idea when we feel panicked.

Even when we know that market cycles are an inevitable part of being a long-term investor, it is still frustrating to just sit there and not do anything when we have a drop. What should you do when the market is down? Most of the time, the best answer is to do nothing. However, if you are looking for ways to capitalize on the current downturn, here are five things you can do today.

1) Put cash to work. The market is on sale, so if you have cash on the sidelines, I wouldn’t hesitate to make some purchases. Stick with high quality, low-cost ETFs or mutual funds, and avoid taking a flyer on individual stocks. If you’ve been waiting to fund your IRA contributions for 2015 or 2016, do it now. Continue to dollar cost average in your 401k or other automatic investment account.

2) If you are fully invested, rebalance now; sell some of your fixed income and use the proceeds to buy more stocks to get back to your target asset allocation. Of course, most investors who do it themselves don’t have a target allocation, which is their first mistake. If you don’t have a pre-determined asset allocation, now is a good time to diversify.

3) Harvest losses. In your taxable account, look for positions with losses and exchange those for a different ETF in the same category. For example, if you have a loss on a small cap mutual fund, you could sell it to harvest the loss, and immediately replace it with a different small cap ETF or fund.

By doing an immediate swap, you maintain your overall allocation and remain invested for any subsequent rally. The loss you generate can be used to offset any capital gains distributions that may occur later in the year. If the realized losses exceed your gains for the year, you can apply $3,000 of the losses against ordinary income, and the remaining unused losses will carry forward to future years indefinitely. My favorite thing about harvesting losses: being able to use long-term losses (taxed at 15%) to offset short-term gains (taxed as ordinary income, which could be as high as 43.4%).

4) Trade your under-performing, high expense mutual funds for a low cost ETF. This is a great time to clean up your portfolio. I often see individual investors who have 8, 10, or more different mutual funds, but when we look at them, they’re all US large cap funds. That’s not diversification, that’s being a fund collector! While you are getting rid of the dogs in your portfolio, make sure you are going into a truly diversified, global allocation.

5) Roth Conversion. If positions in your IRA are down significantly, and you plan to hold on to them, consider converting those assets to a Roth IRA. That means paying tax on the conversion amount today, but once in the Roth, all future growth and distributions will be tax-free. For example, if you had $10,000 invested in a stock, and it has dropped to $6,000, you could convert the IRA position to a Roth, pay taxes on the $6,000, and then it will be in a tax-free account.

Before making a Roth Conversion, talk with your financial planner and CPA to make sure you understand all the tax ramifications that will apply to your individual situation. I am not necessarily recommending everyone do a Roth Conversion, but if you want to do one, the best time is when the market is down.

What many investors say to me is that they don’t want to do anything right now, because if they hold on, those positions might come back. If they don’t sell, the loss isn’t real. This is a cognitive trap, called “loss aversion”. Investors are much more willing to sell stocks that have a gain than stocks that are at a loss. And unfortunately, this mindset can prevent investors from efficiently managing their assets.

Hopefully, now, you will realize that there are ways to help your portfolio when the market is down, through putting cash to work, rebalancing, harvesting losses for tax purposes, upgrading your funds to low-cost ETFs, or doing a Roth Conversion. Remember that market volatility creates opportunities. It may be painful to see losses today, but experiencing the ups and downs of the market cycle is an inevitable part of being a long-term investor.

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