After Tax Contributions in Traditional IRA
I recently found my tax filings from the mid- to late-1980s and discovered that I have approximately $1,200 of after-tax contributions in my IRA. I also have a Roth IRA that I opened about 10 years later. Now that I am close to RMD age (next year), I was wondering if I can move those contributions from the Traditional IRA into the Roth IRA?
Permalink Submitted by Alan - IRA critic on Tue, 2021-08-03 15:31
That won’t work unless you are still working, roll the entire pre tax IRA balance into the employer plan, and then convert the remaining IRA basis. You also must have filed Form 8606 to report all your non deductible IRA contributions starting in 1987. Otherwise, any conversion you do will pro rate your IRA basis on Form 8606 which means your conversion will be almost entirely taxable. Realistically, unless your TIRA is quite small, for only 1200 of basis, you might not want to bother filing the 8606 forms if you have not yet done so, since doing so will result in having to pro rate your RMDs between taxable and non taxable and filling up Form 8606 for every year from here. For 1200 recovered @ of less than $100 a year, it probably is not worth it.