Don’t Forget to Pay Tax on Your 2010 Roth Conversion

Remember back in those heady days in 2010, when you finally had carte blanche eligibility to convert your IRA funds to a Roth IRA regardless of your income?  And then there was a special provision that the IRS made available: you could convert money to your Roth IRA in 2010, and delay recognizing the income and paying the tax over the next two years… remember that?  That was so cool.

However.

(Ever notice how there’s always a “however” in life?)

Here we are, two years later, and NOW you have to pay tax on the Roth conversion that happened way back then.  You might have forgotten it altogether, but you can bet the IRS hasn’t forgotten.

Hopefully you didn’t forget this on your 2011 tax return that you filed in 2012 as well.  At that time, you should have recognized half of the deferred Roth IRA conversion from 2010 on your 2011 return, and paid tax on that half.  Now, in 2012, you’re up to the point where you can finish this off.  On your 2012 return you will recognize the remaining half of the 2010 conversion, and pay the tax on it.

The good news is that the tax rates haven’t gone wild like a lot of folks projected – as long as your income didn’t dramatically increase your rates should be roughly the same as they were in 2010.  In addition, if you decided to do your Roth Conversion as soon as possible in 2010 and you invested in the S&P 500 (for example), you would have experienced an increase of more than 33.3% to this writing (February, 2013).  That should help take the sting out of the tax cost.

Just don’t forget to finish paying the taxes on your conversion this year. The penalties and interest on the unpaid tax could take all of the benefit out of your conversion/delay strategy.