Roth Conversion Window: The Estate Play From 60 to 73

The Window: From Your Last Paycheck to Age 73

Your working years run at full salary, taxed in full brackets. At 73, required minimum distributions begin, and the IRS starts forcing taxable income out of your traditional IRA whether you want it or not. Between those two events sits a trough. The paychecks have stopped, Social Security may not have started, and your taxable income can fall to the lowest level of your adult life. For a married couple in 2026, the 22% bracket runs to $211,400 of taxable income and the 24% bracket runs to $403,550. In the trough years, most retirees have enormous unused room in those brackets, room that expires unused every December 31.

A Roth conversion spends that room on purpose. You move dollars from a traditional IRA, where every withdrawal is taxed as ordinary income, into a Roth, where growth and qualified withdrawals are tax free and no distributions are ever required during your lifetime. The converted amount is taxable income in the year you convert, so the whole game is converting in years when that income lands in cheap brackets. There is no age limit and no income limit on conversions, and you can repeat them year after year, which is why the standard play is a multi-year ladder, a measured slice each year, sized to fill the 22% or 24% bracket and stop. Our Roth conversion calculator prices a slice at your numbers, including the Social Security and Medicare effects flat bracket math misses. (Retiring well before 59 and a half? The early-access version of this strategy is the Roth conversion ladder, with its own rules and its own page.)

One choice widens the trough. Retirees who delay Social Security keep their taxable income lower during the conversion years, which leaves more cheap bracket room for the ladder, and the benefit itself grows for each year of delay. Whether delaying fits your cash flow is a question for your CPA and financial advisor, not a legal one, but the interaction is worth knowing. The claiming decision and the conversion schedule are one plan, not two. And a caution for anyone converting before 59 and a half. Pay the conversion tax from money outside the account, because any amount withheld from the conversion for taxes never reaches the Roth, is treated as a distribution, and can trigger the 10% early-withdrawal penalty on top. The mechanics of moving retirement money without tripping the rollover rules, and the fix when a deadline gets missed, are on our 60-day rollover rule guide.

So far this sounds like income tax planning, and partly it is. The reason it belongs on an estate planning site is what happens to the account when you die, which is where the numbers get dramatic.

The Bracket Bomb: What Your Heirs Pay If You Do Nothing

When your children inherit a traditional IRA, they generally must empty it within 10 years, and for most adult children the money arrives in their peak earning years, stacked on top of a salary. Unlike your home or your stock, retirement accounts get no step-up in basis at death. The income tax you deferred rides inside the account and lands on your heirs at their rates, not yours. Our inherited IRA RMD calculator shows the forced schedule; the table below shows what it costs.

The figures are computed from the 2026 federal tax tables, held constant across the 10 years for illustration. The heir files single, the income figures are taxable income after deductions, the account is spread evenly across the 10 years (a lumpier schedule is usually worse), and state income tax is left out entirely, a point we return to in the Florida section. Growth inside the account over the decade is also left out, which understates the real bill.

Swipe the table sideways to see both heirs.

Computed federal income tax an heir pays on an inherited traditional IRA of $500,000, $1 million, or $2 million spread over 10 years, at $150,000 and $250,000 of taxable income, using 2026 brackets
Inherited IRA	Forced out each year	Heir with $150,000 taxable income	Heir with $250,000 taxable income
$500,000	$50,000	$12,000 a year (24%); about $120,000 total	$17,313 a year (34.6%); about $173,000 total
$1,000,000	$100,000	$27,858 a year (27.9%); about $279,000 total	$34,813 a year (34.8%); about $348,000 total
$2,000,000	$200,000	$62,671 a year (31.3%); about $627,000 total	$69,813 a year (34.9%); about $698,000 total

Now the other side of the ledger. A retired married couple converting inside the window keeps every converted dollar inside the 22% and 24% brackets, which in 2026 reach $211,400 and $403,550 of taxable income. Converting the same $1 million across the window at those rates costs roughly $220,000 to $240,000 of federal tax, against about $348,000 for the higher-earning heir, a saving in the neighborhood of $108,000 to $128,000, from nothing but timing. On $2 million the gap widens to roughly $218,000. The marginal spread driving it is 11 to 13 points. The heir's top dollars are taxed at 35% while the owner's were taxed at 22% or 24%. All of these figures are computed illustrations, not projections, and your CPA should run them at your real numbers.

Honesty requires the other rows too. A $500,000 account passing to a moderate-income heir is close to a wash on federal rates alone, and if your heirs will earn less in retirement than you do now, converting can lose. The window is a tool, not a doctrine. What the table shows is that for a large account headed to working adult children, doing nothing quietly selects the highest bracket in the family.

The Three Timing Gates Inside the Window

The window is not a uniform runway. Three gates change the cost of a conversion year by year, and the ladder gets shaped around them.

Age 63, when the Medicare lookback begins to matter. Medicare sets its income-based premium surcharges from your tax return two years earlier, so the premiums you pay at 65 are built from the income you report at 63. A large conversion at 63 or later can raise your Medicare premiums for a full year, and the surcharge tiers are cliffs, so a single dollar over a line prices the whole year. Social Security does allow a new determination after certain life-changing events, retirement among them, but a conversion is not one of them. The practical rule is simple. From 63 on, every year's slice is sized with the premium effect two years out on the table.
Before 65, the health-insurance subsidy gate. A retiree buying marketplace coverage before Medicare often receives a premium tax credit that shrinks as household income rises. Conversion income is income for that purpose, so a big conversion year before 65 can quietly hand back thousands of dollars of subsidy. Sometimes the conversion still wins; sometimes the right move is smaller slices until Medicare begins. It is a modeling question, and it is exactly the kind your CPA should see before the conversion, not at filing time.
After 73, the window degrades. Once required minimum distributions begin, each year's required amount comes out first, as taxable income, and the IRS does not allow it to be converted. The RMD fills your cheap brackets on its own, so any conversion stacks on top at higher rates. You can still convert above the RMD, and for estate reasons it sometimes pays, but every year past 73 the same move costs more. This is why the two-year runway of a 71-year-old is worth acting on and the ten-year runway of a 63-year-old is worth planning.

The Widow’s Penalty: Why Converting While Married Matters

Here is the gate nobody schedules. Married couples file jointly in brackets roughly twice as wide as a single filer's. When the first spouse dies, the survivor generally files as a single taxpayer beginning the year after the death, and the walls move in. In 2026 the 22% bracket ends at $211,400 for a couple but $105,700 for a single filer, and the 24% bracket ends at $403,550 against $201,775. The survivor usually keeps most of the household income, the same IRA, and soon the same required distributions, now taxed in brackets half as wide. Advisors call it the widow's penalty.

For conversion planning the consequence is blunt. The cheap room is a joint asset, and it dies at the first death. A couple who converts steadily through their sixties uses bracket space that will not exist for the survivor. A couple who waits converts later at single rates, or leaves the account to compound its embedded tax bill until the 10-year clock hands it to the children. Of all the reasons to start the ladder rather than study it another year, this one has the hardest deadline, because nobody knows the date.

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The Florida Wedge: Zero State Tax on Every Conversion

Everything above is federal law, the same in all fifty states. The state layer is where Florida changes the arithmetic twice.

On the way in. Florida has no state income tax, so a Florida-domiciled owner converts at the federal rate and nothing more. The same conversion by a resident of a high-tax state adds a state bill on top of every slice, year after year. For a retiree already planning a move south, sequence matters. Establish Florida domicile first, then run the big conversion years. Domicile is a fact pattern, not a wish, and the steps that make it stick, the declaration of domicile among them, are covered on our domicile guide. Get the sequence wrong and the old state may still claim the conversion income.

On the way out. Think about where your heirs live. A child in a high-tax state pays that state's income tax on every forced distribution from an inherited traditional IRA, on top of the federal bracket-bomb math above, and the child cannot plan around it. Distributions from an inherited Roth are generally tax free, federally and in the states that follow the federal treatment, which is nearly all of them. So the play compresses to a sentence. Convert in Florida at zero state tax, and your family inherits tax free anywhere. The owner's domicile does the saving; the heirs' domiciles stop mattering.

One sibling case is worth flagging. For Americans who move to Israel, the conversion timing interacts with the Israeli new-immigrant exemption, a cross-border wrinkle with its own page, Roth conversions for olim.

The Asset-Location Package: The Estate Design Around the Ladder

The conversion ladder is one move. The premium version of this planning, what we call the asset-location package, seats every major asset where death treats it well, because the tax code treats different assets at death in opposite ways. Appreciated taxable assets get a step-up in basis; retirement accounts get none. Building the plan around that asymmetry is where the estate lawyer's half of the work lives.

Appreciated taxable assets ride to death, positioned for the step-up. The brokerage account, the long-held stock, the rental property. These should generally pass at death, when their basis resets and a lifetime of gain escapes tax. For married couples, a Florida community property trust can aim for a step-up on the entire asset, both halves, at the first death rather than half. One honest caveat, stated the same way on that page. The IRS has not issued direct guidance confirming the double step-up for these opt-in trusts, so the benefit could be questioned, and we structure them with that uncertainty in mind.
Retirement dollars run the conversion ladder. A traditional IRA gains nothing from waiting for death. There is no step-up to protect, only an income tax bill compounding for your heirs. That makes retirement accounts the natural asset to convert during the window, while the appreciated assets sit still. Selling appreciated stock to spend during life while gifting away the IRA is the same logic run backwards, and it wastes both rules.
The Roth flows to a retirement subtrust, when protection matters. Naming a trust as beneficiary of a traditional IRA carries a famous tax trap. A trust that accumulates IRA distributions hits the top 37% federal bracket above about $16,000 of retained income in 2026. A Roth defuses it. Distributions from an inherited Roth are generally tax free, so a properly drafted subtrust can catch and hold them for a beneficiary who needs protection from creditors, divorce, or spending, without the trust-bracket penalty that makes accumulation trusts expensive for traditional accounts. (The trust still pays tax on future earnings it retains, but the retirement dollars themselves arrive clean.) The see-through rules, the conduit-versus-accumulation choice, and the drafting details live on our guide to naming a trust as IRA beneficiary.
The conversion tax is paid from taxable funds, and the estate shrinks on purpose. Paying the tax from outside money keeps the full converted amount working inside the Roth, and every tax dollar paid is a dollar out of your taxable estate without using a penny of gift exemption. For most families under the federal exemption the point is the first one. A Roth funded whole beats a Roth funded net of tax. For larger estates, the shrink itself is a quiet transfer to the next generation.

Seated this way, the estate divides cleanly. Heirs inherit the taxable assets with a stepped-up basis and sell tax free, inherit the Roth and empty it tax free, and inherit no embedded income tax bill at all. That is the finished shape the ladder is building toward.

How We Work: Your CPA Runs the Numbers, We Design the Structure

Two professions share this plan, and the line between them should be bright. Nothing on this page is investment advice, and none of it tells you what to buy, sell, or convert. The year-by-year modeling, your brackets against your heirs', the Medicare and subsidy effects, the size of each slice, belongs with your CPA and financial advisor, and our page on working with your financial advisor explains how the collaboration runs. If you do not have a CPA, we work with several and will make an introduction.

Our half is the structure the numbers pour into. It starts with the free 30-minute Beneficiary Audit. Bring the beneficiary form for every retirement account, plus your trust if you have one, and we read each designation against your plan and the current payout rules. From there, the work is the asset-location design above, meaning which assets are positioned for the step-up, what the trust says about retirement accounts, whether a community property trust or a retirement subtrust earns its place, and beneficiary forms that actually execute the design. Fixes are quoted flat at the consult before any work starts. The rules here are federal, so we advise on the beneficiary and structure side nationwide; we draft Florida documents for Florida residents and coordinate with local counsel elsewhere.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I Start Converting at 65?

Yes, and you can start earlier. Federal law puts no age limit and no income limit on Roth conversions, so the question is never whether you may convert but what each converted dollar costs. At 65 you are on Medicare, which means every conversion year now sets your premiums two years later, so the annual slices get sized with that in mind. Before 65, the gate is different. Conversion income can shrink a health-insurance subsidy. Starting at 65 still leaves an eight-year runway to 73, which is enough to move a large IRA in deliberate, bracket-sized pieces.

Can I Convert After 73?

Yes, but only above the required distribution. Once required minimum distributions begin, each year’s required amount must come out first, as ordinary taxable income, and the IRS does not allow that amount to be converted or rolled into a Roth. Only dollars above the RMD can move. Because the RMD has already filled your lower brackets, every converted dollar stacks on top at a higher rate. Conversions after 73 can still make sense for estate reasons, but the same dollars converted before 73 would have been taxed more cheaply. The window degrades; it does not slam shut.

Does Florida Tax Roth Conversions?

No. Florida has no state income tax, so a Florida-domiciled owner pays only federal tax on a conversion. That matters twice. First, converting the same dollars as a resident of a high-tax state can add a state layer on top of the federal bill. Second, heirs benefit on the receiving end. A child in a high-tax state pays that state’s income tax on every forced distribution from an inherited traditional IRA, while distributions from an inherited Roth are generally tax free. Convert in Florida and the account travels clean to an heir anywhere.

Is There an Age or Income Limit on Roth Conversions?

No. Unlike Roth contributions, which phase out at higher incomes, conversions have had no income limit since 2010 and have never had an age limit. You can convert any amount, at any age, in any year, and repeat it annually, which is what makes the multi-year ladder possible. The one hard restriction is the required-distribution rule. Once RMDs begin at 73, the year’s required amount cannot be converted. And a conversion is permanent. The old recharacterization do-over was repealed, so each year’s slice should be modeled before it is executed, not regretted after.

Do My Heirs Pay Tax on an Inherited Roth IRA?

Generally no. Distributions from an inherited Roth are tax free once the account has met the five-year holding rule, which a Roth funded by conversions during your sixties will have met many times over. Heirs still must empty the account, usually within 10 years of your death, but emptying a Roth adds nothing to their taxable income, does not push them into higher brackets, and does not trigger state income tax the way a traditional IRA does. That is the whole estate case for converting. The same 10-year clock runs either way, but only one version of the account has a tax bill inside it.

What Is the Widow’s Penalty?

When the first spouse dies, the survivor generally files as a single taxpayer beginning the year after the death, and the single brackets are roughly half as wide as the married ones. In 2026 the 24% bracket ends at $403,550 for a married couple but at $201,775 for a single filer. The survivor often keeps most of the household income, so the same dollars are suddenly taxed in higher brackets, and the cheap conversion room the couple had is gone. Converting while you are both alive uses bracket space that disappears at the first death. Waiting for someday is how families lose it.

Does a Roth Conversion Count Toward My RMD?

No, and the order matters more than people expect. Once required minimum distributions have begun, the year’s required amount must come out first and be taxed, and the IRS does not allow that amount to be converted; only dollars above it can move to the Roth. So a conversion never satisfies an RMD, and an RMD can never become a conversion. In practice the order is fixed. Take the required distribution, then convert whatever additional slice the year’s bracket room supports. Custodians occasionally process these in the wrong order, and unwinding a converted RMD is an excess-contribution repair job, so the paperwork deserves a careful eye.

Should I Convert My IRA to a Roth After Retirement?

For many retirees yes, and the years right after the last paycheck are usually the cheapest the conversion will ever be. Income drops into the lowest brackets of your adult life, no required distribution stands in front of the money yet, and each year’s slice can be sized to fill the 22% or 24% bracket and stop. Whether it pays in your case turns on the account’s size and your heirs’ brackets. A large IRA headed to working adult children is the strong case, while a modest account headed to lower-earning heirs can be a wash. That comparison is the heart of this page, and your CPA runs it at your real numbers.

Is This the Same as the Roth Conversion Ladder?

Same mechanism, different goal. The ladder popular in early-retirement circles uses annual conversions plus the rule that each converted amount can come out penalty free once its own five-year clock runs, so someone retiring at 45 builds a bridge of accessible money before 59 and a half. The window on this page runs the same annual conversions for a different prize, filling the cheap brackets between retirement and 73 so your family inherits a Roth instead of a tax bill. Past 59 and a half the per-conversion penalty clock stops mattering, though a first Roth still needs the separate five-year rule met before earnings come out tax free.

Who Runs the Conversion Numbers?

Your CPA, working with your financial advisor. We do not manage investments or model tax returns, and nothing on this page is investment advice. What we design is the structure the numbers pour into, meaning which assets should ride to your heirs with a step-up, which should convert, who inherits each account and through what vehicle, and what your trust says about retirement money. The free Beneficiary Audit is the entry point, the fixes are quoted flat, and we coordinate directly with your CPA so the legal structure and the tax math never contradict each other.

Common Situations

The 65-year-old couple with $1.2 million. A couple retires at 65 with $1.2 million in traditional IRAs and modest pension income. Their CPA models an eight-year ladder to 73, sized to fill the 22% bracket and mind the Medicare lookback that now prices every year's income into premiums two years later. On our side, their brokerage account moves into a community property trust aimed at a full step-up, the beneficiary forms route each Roth to the children directly, and the trust's retirement provisions are rebuilt so nothing forces money out faster than the law requires. The children stand to inherit a Roth and a stepped-up portfolio instead of a seven-figure tax bill.

The widow who converted too late. A couple meant to start converting for years; there was always a reason to wait. The husband died at 74, and his widow kept the house, the income, and the entire IRA, now taxed in single brackets half as wide, with required distributions already running. Conversions that would have cost the couple 22 cents on the dollar now cost her 32 or 35. She converts what still makes sense and names the children directly on the rest, but the cheap years are gone. Families who plan the ladder while both spouses are healthy keep the choice; this one lost it to the calendar.

The 71-year-old with the two-year runway. A retired engineer comes in at 71 assuming he has missed the window. He has not. Two full years remain before required distributions begin, and no RMD stands in front of a conversion yet. His CPA sizes two deliberate slices to the top of the 24% bracket, the premium effect two years out priced in. After 73 he can still convert above each year's RMD, but these two years are the last in which every dollar of bracket room belongs to the conversion. The audit also catches a beneficiary form still naming his late wife, which would have sent the account through his estate.

Sources of Law

Rev. Proc. 2025-32 (2026 inflation adjustments): the full 2026 rate tables used throughout, including the married-filing-jointly brackets (22% to $211,400; 24% to $403,550; 35% to $768,700) and single brackets (22% to $105,700; 24% to $201,775; 32% to $256,225; 35% to $640,600); estates and trusts reach 37% above $16,000; standard deduction $32,200 joint and $16,100 single. irs.gov (Rev. Proc. 2025-32) (retrieved August 11, 2026). The bracket-bomb table and the owner-versus-heir comparisons on this page are computed illustrations from these tables, holding 2026 brackets constant, with the stated assumptions; they are not projections.
Roth conversions: IRC §408A and §408A(d)(3) (conversion of a traditional IRA to a Roth; no age limit; the modified-AGI limit on conversions was eliminated for years after 2009); §13611 of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (recharacterization of conversions repealed; conversions are irreversible). law.cornell.edu
IRS Publication 590-A, Contributions to Individual Retirement Arrangements: conversion mechanics; amounts required to be distributed for the year may not be converted; amounts withheld from a conversion for income tax are treated as distributed and can be subject to the 10% additional tax before age 59 and a half. irs.gov/publications/p590a (retrieved August 11, 2026)
IRS Publication 590-B, Distributions from Individual Retirement Arrangements, and the IRS Required Minimum Distribution FAQs: RMDs begin at age 73 and may not be rolled over or converted; Roth IRA owners take no required distributions during life; the 10-year rule for most non-spouse beneficiaries, with annual distributions in years one through nine when the owner died on or after the required beginning date; the five-year qualified-distribution rule and the separate five-year clock on each conversion for withdrawals before 59 and a half. irs.gov/publications/p590b (retrieved August 11, 2026)
IRC §691 and §1014(c) (income in respect of a decedent; retirement accounts receive no basis step-up at death); §1014(b)(6) (both halves of community property step up at the first spouse's death). There is no direct IRS ruling confirming a double step-up for elective community property trusts; the benefit is well supported but not assured.
Medicare income-related premium surcharges: Social Security Administration, Medicare Premiums: Rules for Higher-Income Beneficiaries (surcharges determined from the modified adjusted gross income on the tax return from two years earlier; a new determination is available after qualifying life-changing events on Form SSA-44). ssa.gov (retrieved August 11, 2026)
IRC §36B (the premium tax credit for marketplace health coverage phases down as household income rises; conversion income counts).
Florida imposes no state income tax; Fla. Stat. §222.17 (declaration of domicile).

The window is open. It will not stay open.

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Updated on August 17, 2026. Reviewed by Kevin D. Klagge, Esq., Fla. Bar No. 99502. Attorney Kevin Klagge represents families, businesses, and international clients in estate and tax planning, business structuring, and international law, with a focus on Florida legal tools. He litigates estate and business issues in court. This article is general information about federal tax law and Florida law, not legal, tax, or investment advice, and does not create an attorney-client relationship. We do not manage investments or recommend securities; whether, when, and how much to convert are decisions to model with your CPA and financial advisor, and the figures on this page are computed illustrations from the 2026 federal tax tables, not projections of your result. Federal figures adjust periodically and may change. Your result depends on your specific facts. Do not send confidential information until we have agreed to represent you.

The Roth Conversion Window: From Your Last Paycheck to Age 73