I have several IRA's that I would like to consolidate into one Roth IRA, how is that done and what are the tax consequences?

The first item to consider is you will have to take all the funds you convert from a regular IRA to a Roth as ordinary income. There are income limits for Roth IRAs.

Here is a link http://tinyurl.com/6mxely

If you google "ira convert to Roth" you will get a lot of hits.

Gordon
Atlanta

I have several IRA's that I would like to consolidate into one Roth IRA, how is that done and what are the tax consequences?

For other Roth IRAs - you can do a rollover with no tax consequences.

For traditional IRAs it will be a conversion. To do a conversion, your MAGI must be below the cap of $100k - see IRS publication 590 for details of how to calculate MAGI, and other details about conversions. You will owe taxes at the marginal rate based on your total income, including the conversion.

AJ

You should contact the company that the Roth IRA will be with and let them handle it for you. You should have your most recent statement from the old account to make the transfer as easy as possible.

There are several other ways to transfer money between IRA accounts, but you may get stuck with penalties and taxes if it is not done exactly right using the other methods.

Typically if you have stock in the account, it does not need to be sold to be transferred. When you talk with the company that you are moving the money to, ask them about any mutual funds that you have, some can be easily transferred, others will have to be sold, then transferred as cash then reinvested in the Roth.

The company that the old account is currently with at may charge a transfer fee or account closing fee of about $50 to $75 dollars. You should ask about this ahead of time.

For the Traditional IRA to Roth IRA conversion, if you do your taxes with software like Turbo Tax you can make a copy of your tax return and enter the numbers as if you had converted to see the tax impact. Be sure to also check your state taxes.

If there is any question if you should convert the accounts or not,
you might want to wait until early December to do any IRA to Roth conversions because you will pretty well know your tax situation for the year then.

Greg