convert pre-tax annuity to roth IRA
A client has about $1.4M in indexed annuities invested with pre-tax IRA money. He would like to begin converting this money at age 65 to a Roth IRA and understands the tax implications. He can take up to 10% of his money per year from the annuities with no surrender penalties, or $140K per year. My understanding is that he can convert this full amount to a Roth, but I wanted to confirm this with the experts.
Permalink Submitted by Alan - IRA critic on Mon, 2019-12-02 19:43
He can convert any amount he wishes, but incremental conversions every year will prevent a high tax rate on a large conversion done in a single year. The ideal conversion scenario is the window between retirement, collecting SS benefits, and the start of RMDs at 70.5 since marginal rates should be lower in those few years (5 years in this case). A very large conversion would erase that advantage. He should also be careful in determining the annual conversion amounts, and should be able to pay the added taxes from other funds. Any surrender fees could be factored in as if they were higher tax rates (but paid to the insurance company rather than the IRS). Conversions can no longer be recharacterized, so large tax bills cannot be erased.