Craig Wear, CFP®Craig Wear, CFP® | Expert in Roth Conversions & Tax-Efficient Retirement Strategies for IRA Millionaires

How IRA Millionaires Face Higher Taxes

22 Jan 2025 · 0 min

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A short video segment (speaker: Craig Wear, CFP®) explaining that for wealthy IRA owners—'IRA millionaires'—the primary tax issue is the size of future required minimum distributions (RMDs), which can push them into higher tax brackets for life. The speaker argues that conversion opportunities and breakeven calculations matter less than the cumulative RMD impact.

Your future tax rate has very little to do with the conversion opportunity. Your breakeven point where your net worth is the same or not has very little to do with your break even strategy. We calculate all those things, but really the fact is that the sum amount of your future RMD is really the problem for large IRA owners. I call you IRA millionaires. Those required minimum distributions are going to push you into a higher tax bracket for the rest of your life.