Does my mother need to take an RMD from her IRA or can she just convert it to a Roth IRA?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why is a 72 year old making Roth contributions in the first place?

Lol! One could ask! Her investment goal she says is to leave as much as she can for her kids to inherit.

That makes the Roth make less sense. Cost basis restarts at death and there's no cap gain. Take the tax break now.

Cost basis of what?

+1. Roth withdrawals are tax free. “Cost basis” is not a consideration.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How much does she make that she cannot do Roth right away? Why backdoor?

Yes! So much of this doesn’t make sense. And why worry about RMDs on $25k? It won’t be that much. She can take the RMD and invest it in a brokerage if she wants to leave money to inherit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How much does she make that she cannot do Roth right away? Why backdoor?

Yes! So much of this doesn’t make sense. And why worry about RMDs on $25k? It won’t be that much. She can take the RMD and invest it in a brokerage if she wants to leave money to inherit.

Why would she do that and pay extra tax for the rest of her life? OP should listen to the post with the IRS link and ignore the rest of this thread.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How much does she make that she cannot do Roth right away? Why backdoor?

She makes a relatively high salary and maxes out her 401k Roth contribution with her employer. In addition, she does a backdoor IRA Roth to the max (I believe that is now around $8000 a year). She omitted the immediate conversion to an IRA Roth from an IRA in 2023 and 2024 and hasn't yet made her 2025 IRA contribution to backdoor to an IRA Roth because she has been preoccupied with other things.

She has been with her employer a long time and her pre-tax 401k is healthy; she plans to live on that and social security once she retires.

She doesn't have a brokerage account. On her death, the heirs would have no capital gains on a brokerage account, but her thinking is that the IRA Roth would enable heirs to keep it growing for ten years after her death before having to take it out, tax free and, thus, be more advantageous to them.