Roth conversions for retirees and individuals nearing retirement often confuse financial planners and individual investors. In this post, we discuss the pros and cons of converting a portion of tax-deferred assets to a Roth IRA. The insights I share here reflect early results from a recently conducted research initiative.
Why Convert to a Roth IRA?
Converting funds from a tax-deferred account, like a 401(k), 403(b), traditional IRA, or rollover IRA, may seem counterintuitive to many. Indeed, in my recent award-winning article on Seeking Tax Alpha in Retirement Income, which will soon appear in the Financial Services Review, I highlighted how many tax professionals, like CPAs, generally advocate deferring taxes for as long as possible. Converting funds to a Roth IRA imposes a current tax liability, contradicting this conventional wisdom. However, the communicative law of multiplication suggests otherwise for funds converted at the end of the year. A positive payoff occurs when the current marginal tax rate is less than the future marginal tax rate. Stated more simply:
Always seek the lowest marginal tax rate, either now, or in the future, when converting, or distributing tax-deferred assets.
Adapted from DiLellio and Ostrov (2017) “Optimal Strategies for Traditional versus Roth IRA/Roth 401(k) Consumption During Retirement”, Decision Sciences Journal. 48(2).
Tax Alpha from Converting to a Roth IRA
In my recent unpublished research results with Ed McQuerrie, we propose to show the benefit of Roth conversions in terms of tax alpha or the additional annual return realized by converting. If a distribution from the Roth IRA then pays the taxes, the figure below shows the tax alpha over a number of holding periods, from five to 40 years. We see that when future tax rates are higher, there is a significant benefit, but that tax alpha diminishes over time. Similarly, if an investor converts their tax-deferred assets and the future tax rates are lower, the negative payoff can be significant initially, but the loss will also diminish over time.
The Challenge to Roth Conversions
The U.S. Congress sets tax rates. So, we can’t know future tax rates with certainty. But, a retiree is able to control the amount of ordinary income generated by distributions from tax-deferred accounts. Also, the results above assume the investor is at least 59 1/2 so they can avoid the tax penalty on early withdrawals to fund the tax liability. In our next post, we will highlight some beneficial results if an investor pays conversion taxes with a non-retirement account.
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