He Spent His 60s Quietly Moving His IRA Into a Roth. At 73, When the IRS Showed Up to Dictate His Withdrawals, There Was Nothing Left to Tax
Quick Read
Converting a traditional IRA to a Roth during your 60s eliminates RMDs at 73, letting you control withdrawals instead of the IRS.
The 12% bracket tops at $100,800 for joint filers, giving retirees a low-cost annual window to convert before Social Security pushes income higher.
Large conversions inflate MAGI and can trigger Medicare IRMAA surcharges up to $487 per month extra on Part B two years later.
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If you have a traditional IRA and you’re somewhere between the day you stopped working and the day the IRS starts dictating your withdrawals, you’re sitting on the single best tax window of your life. It’s called a Roth conversion, and executed during the gap years between retirement and required minimum distributions, it can quietly empty out the account the IRS was planning to tax on its own schedule. Do it right and by 73, there’s nothing left for the government to force out.
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The Buried Rule Hiding in Your IRA
A Roth IRA has no required minimum distributions for the original owner. Ever. Every dollar you shift from a traditional IRA into a Roth in your 60s is a dollar that will never appear on an RMD schedule, never stack on top of Social Security, and never get pulled at the worst possible tax rate. You pay ordinary income tax on the converted amount in the year you convert, then the account grows tax-free for the rest of your life. The strategy is to deliberately fill up the low brackets before RMDs and Social Security force your income higher.
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Where the Rule Actually Lives
Roth IRAs are governed by Internal Revenue Code §408A, and the RMD rules are in §401(a)(9). The SECURE 2.0 Act pushed the RMD start age to 73 for anyone born between 1951 and 1959, which is what creates the modern conversion window. The current brackets and deduction amounts come from Revenue Procedure 2025-32, the IRS’s tax year 2026 inflation adjustments announced October 9, 2025.
Who Actually Wins Here
This works if you retired before 73, have meaningful traditional IRA or 401(k) balances, expect RMDs to push you into a higher bracket later, and can pay the conversion tax from a taxable brokerage account instead of the IRA itself. It does not work well if you’re already in the top bracket now and expect a lower one later, if you’d need to tap the converted funds within five years, if paying the tax would force you to sell the IRA to cover it, or if you’re a high-income Medicare beneficiary already sitting at the top IRMAA tier.
How to Run the Play in 2026
Estimate your taxable income for the year before any conversion. For a married couple filing jointly, the standard deduction is $32,200, so income below that is effectively untaxed.
Identify the top of the bracket you’re willing to fill. The 12% bracket runs to $100,800 for joint filers ($50,400 single), and the 22% bracket runs to $211,400 joint ($105,700 single). Many retirees convert up to the top of 12% or 24%.
Convert the exact dollar amount that fills that bracket. Not more.
Pay the tax from outside funds. Using IRA dollars to cover the bill shrinks the account you’re trying to move.
Repeat every year until 73, or until the balance is where you want it.
The Catch Nobody Warns You About
Three traps. First, every conversion starts its own five-year clock before earnings can come out tax-free, tracked separately from any earlier Roth. Second, a conversion inflates your modified adjusted gross income, and Medicare uses a two-year lookback for IRMAA. A big 2026 conversion sets your 2028 Part B and Part D surcharges. The 2026 IRMAA brackets start biting joint filers above $218,000 in MAGI and hit the top surcharge at $750,000, adding as much as $487.00 per month on Part B alone. Third, conversion income raises the taxable portion of your Social Security benefit and can push provisional income past the 85% threshold, so if you’re already collecting, model the interaction before pulling the trigger.
The window closes at 73. With the 2027 Social Security COLA tracking toward 3.1%, benefit checks and RMDs both keep climbing. Every gap year you don’t use is a year the IRS gets to write the withdrawal schedule instead of you.
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