Transfer: Roth to Roth
I am 66 years old. I started with trustee #1 a traditional IRA in 2006 and a Roth IRA in June 2008. I have been converting the traditional to the Roth each year. I started with trustee #2 a Roth in July 2007. How old is each Roth today? Is it okay to transfer a portion or all of the trustee #1 Roth to the trustee #2 Roth this year, 2011, by the direct trustee to trustee method? Thanks, 2roth
Permalink Submitted by Alan Spross on Thu, 2011-04-21 18:51
Since you are over 59.5, the only applicable holding period is the 5 year period starting with the year of your first Roth contribution, whether a regular contribution or a conversion.
Apparently, your first Roth contribution was in 2007 and therefore all your Roth IRAs are qualified and fully tax free as of 1/1/2012. Transfers between your accounts does not change any of this.
If you think you will recharacterize either your 2010 conversion or 2011 conversion, it is sometimes better to keep those conversion in separate accounts until they can no longer be recharacterized, and then combine them with the other Roth accounts, but this is by no means a necessity unless you are using certain conversion strategies. If you are sure that you will not be recharacterizing recent conversions, then go ahead and combine the accounts if you wish.