Roth, RMDs & Medicare
Conversion timing, required withdrawals, the IRMAA lookback, and what changes for a surviving spouse.
You have an advisor. Do you have a retirement tax plan?
The full walk, in order: Roth timing, rising RMDs, the Medicare cliff, the survivor’s trap, the 10-year rule, and the five questions to ask before saying yes to anything.
Read the guide →Potentially one of the best retirement tax strategies out there: just move.
Nine states take nothing from your retirement income. Move before the conversions and RMDs start — and establish residency properly — and the state’s share can go to zero. The sequencing, and the audit traps.
You converted this year. The bill lands in 2028.
The IRMAA two-year lookback, what counts as MAGI, and when Form SSA-44 can — and can’t — help.
Read →Same income. Half the brackets.
The widow’s penalty: what the survivor keeps, the three lines that cut in half, and why the joint-filing years are the window.
Read →Ten years to empty it — and a bill every year inside.
The 10-year rule, the 2024 annual-withdrawal surprise, who’s exempt, and why an inherited Roth plays by gentler rules.
Read →Born in 1959? Congress gave you two RMD ages.
The SECURE 2.0 drafting glitch, the IRS fix, what the two-year gap is worth, and the April 1 trap inside the first year.
Read →There are two Roth 5-year rules. Almost everyone conflates them.
One clock guards earnings from tax, another guards conversions from penalty — and after 59½, only one usually matters.
Read →One withdrawal. Forty cents on the dollar.
The 2026 thresholds, the combined-income formula, and the phase-in math planners call the tax torpedo.
Read →$6,000 off your taxes at 65 — until income takes it back.
The new senior deduction, the 6-cents-per-dollar phaseout, and the two big numbers it doesn’t touch.
Read →Same conversion. Two states. Six figures apart.
A federal law from 1996 decides which state can tax your conversion — and it turns on where you live the day you convert.
Read →Same ten years. Two different inheritances.
Whose bracket pays the tax on your IRA — yours in the window, or your heir’s at peak salary?
Read →Where the conversion tax comes from changes the result.
Pay it from inside the account and $76,000 of a $100,000 conversion reaches the Roth. Pay it from outside cash and all $100,000 does — same tax bill.
Read →Then see your own numbers.
Your brackets, your IRMAA headroom, your RMD clock — free, in about 3 minutes.
Open the free calculator →1031 exchanges & involuntary conversions
Two sections of the code, two sets of deadlines — and what a sale costs when neither one applies.
Done being a landlord? You have five exits — not two.
Keep and delegate, exchange easier, exchange passive, sell and pay, or hold for the step-up — the honest menu, what each path costs, and why only one of them guarantees a tax bill.
Boot: the part of your 1031 that stays taxable.
Keep $300,000 out of a $1,000,000 sale and the exchange survives — but that slice is taxed now. Cash boot vs. mortgage boot, the worked numbers, and the one-way netting rule that catches sellers at tax time.
The reverse 1031: buy first, sell second.
Found the right replacement before you’ve listed? The parking arrangement that makes it legal, the 180-day hard stop, the financing catch — and when a well-planned forward exchange beats it.
The installment sale: spread the tax, carry the paper.
Take the money over years and the gain follows the payments — except for the depreciation the code pulls into year one. What the down payment decides, and what you take on as the lender.
The charitable remainder trust: sell it without the tax bill.
The trust sells free of capital gains tax at that moment and pays you for life. What the payments are actually taxed as, why a mortgage usually ends it, and what your heirs give up.
First 1031 exchange? Start with what it defers — and what it doesn’t.
What a 1031 exchange defers — capital gains tax, depreciation recapture, the 3.8% surtax, and state tax on top — plus the four requirements and a side-by-side of the same property sold two ways.
Read →How to fill out a 1031 45-day identification form.
The three identification rules, the two unforgiving deadlines, what makes a notice valid — and a free fillable template.
Read →You lost the property. The IRS may still call it a gain.
Eminent domain, fire, flood: the settlement is measured against your depreciated basis, not what the property was worth. Section 1033, the clocks, and the refund window.
Read →Selling or exchanging a property this year?
A short briefing on the 45-day and 180-day clocks, what qualifies as replacement property, and the debt requirement most sellers miss. Free.
Get the briefing →