Investing - Theory, News & General • WSJ-How to Play the Retirement Tax Guessing Game

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Interesting article on Roth conversions featuring quotes from McQ and Ed Slott, who not surprisingly sometimes view this differently.

For the most part most of these concepts have been posted and discussed here multiple times. One thing I had not seen was a paper McQ did basically saying that doing Roth conversions to avoid future single tax rates for a surviving spouses is overrated. The argument, I think, is yes, the marginal income tax rate may be higher, depending on their before and after incomes, but the actual resulting tax dollars isn’t dramatically higher and likely offset be a reduction of other expenses. While that may be true, and an interesting take, I’m not sure what that has to do with doing Roth conversions now at a lower marginal rate to avoid a future higher rate, which will always be financially advantageous, even though probably not life changing

As usual the article and especially the comments make some common Roth theoretical mistakes.

Statistics: Posted by JBTX — Fri Sep 04, 2026 7:13 pm