Craig Wear, a CFP, explains why people 75 or older usually shouldn't convert large IRAs to Roth accounts. The tax savings rarely justify the cost at that age, though conversions can help if you're worried about what your heirs will owe.
So what do you do if you're 75 years old or older and you got a big IRA and you want to do Roth conversions? There still will be tax savings for you, but I don't think it's going to be enough to offset the cost of doing it. However, if you're really concerned about, gee, what am I going to leave for my kids and my heirs, whoever those are going to be, the net benefit can still be hundreds of thousands of dollars of less taxes in total that everybody's going to pay on the deal. But if I were 75 or 80 years old, I wouldn't do convers. If I didn't have any errors, I would just leave it alone.
