Using software to map out retirement and when I construct a scenario with QCD’s over a 30 year period and NO Roth conversions (the plan being to give all of our TIRA assets to charities over many years, thus reducing our taxable RMD’s). Every year the charitable contribution qualifies in full as a QCD. Great.

But when I experiment with converting 25% of our TIRA’s to Roth (not sure why – just curious), some of the $$ earmarked in about 4 later years for charities moves from the “charitable donation-QCD” column to the “charitable donation Non-QCD” column, thereby reducing, and in a few years eliminating, all of the tax benefit for those years.

So taking a step back, would there be ANY reason to convert any TIRA money to a Roth IF your plan is to gift all of it to charities and maximize the tax benefit to both the charity and yourself? My suspicion would be the only reason you’d convert any portion to Roth would be if you plan to use that portion (25%) for yourself OR give it to relatives as tax free inheritance.

So to summarize – if we intend to donate ALL of our TIRA money to charities – DON’T CONVERT ANY PORTION TO ROTH, vs

If you want to keep or gift to heirs a portion, ONLY CONVERT THAT AMOUNT, but your QCD’s tax benefit will take a hit

Do I have this right?