If the Trump administration ends up getting taxes lowered, consider converting all IRA and 401(k) savings over to a Roth IRA. The tax hit today will allow all future growth to be taken out as tax free!
Here are two observations about this advice:
First, when you take income during retirement from a Roth IRA, you do not pay income tax on it. And this income does not force your Social Security benefits to be included for income tax purposes. Withdrawals on 401(k) funds, on the other hand, usually force a Social Security benefits to be taxed with a potential $5,000 tax hit since 401(k) withdrawals count towards the earnings formula for Social Security. Roth IRA withdrawals do not count in that equation so there’s no hit!
Second, when you pay the tax on the Roth IRA conversion today, you or your loved ones don’t have to pay tax on the withdrawals later. A 401(k) is tax-deferred so this means your spouse or kids will have to pay taxes on those withdrawals, or yourself, at a time when you’re on a fixed income, with not near so many deductions as you can take during your working years seeing as your house will probably be paid off and your kids will be grown. To see what a huge burden this can be, understand that the taxes you will pay in retirement on the 401(k) payout will be at least SIX times what you will pay in taxes on a Roth conversion now.
Example: You have $207,000 in an existing 401(k) and over the next 15 years between now and retirement you contribute $6,000 a year into the account and it earns 5% interest, which will equal an additional $129,000; at retirement you have $337,000. Take this $337,000 and pay it out over 35 years for yourself or spouse or children and it will be worth $753,000. Taxes on this total will equal $188,000. If you converted this $207,000 to a Roth IRA instead and deposited the $6,000 a year into the Roth the tax you will pay is only $28,000. Compare you paying $28,000 or $188,000, which do you think is better? The multiplier in this case is 6.7 times!!
If the Trump administration gets taxes lowered, run, don’t walk to convert all tax-deferred accounts to a Roth. More coming in the near future about how this will impact each of us. But in short, lower taxes will indeed spur the economy and change millions of people’s lives so that they have surplus money to save.
