Trying to strike a balance between taking advantage of Roth conversions but also leaving enough in TIRA to do QCD's so I can offset RMD's. Is there a trick to doing this and is there a place to tell PRC to NOT convert more than $X when using the "optimize" feature?
Unless you get lucky and the place you want it to stop doing conversions happens to coincide with an IRMAA tier, an ACA FPL or the LTCG tax phase-in, the optimizer will do its thing. If you are intending to do QCDs, you can nudge the optimizer in the right general direction (though not accurately) by going to Build-Management-Effective Tax Rate and lowering that.
But once the Optimizer has run, you can manually make any adjustment you want. I always test the last tax bracket/IRMAA tier to see how much change it really makes and I won't do the conversion if the improvement in the final Effective $ isn't "good enough". My personal "good enough" is I want to see an improvement of 10% of the value I convert (since I'm projecting for about 30 years, that's roughly the same effect as having someone give me ~3% of the converted amount cash in hand today. I figure if the benefits are smaller than that, the hassle of prepaying the taxes, the risks of tax law changes, life plan changes, heir status changes or the market going down after I excitedly convert, all add up to too much.
If you want to specify an intermediate value for conversions that is not one of the bracket jumps, the best workaround seems to be a two step process. First, enter a Roth Contribution (with no corresponding income) on Employment - keeping in mind that for some odd reason, those aren't adjusted for inflation in the program. Next, use the Scheduled Withdrawal table to withdraw a matching amount from your IRA.
Thanks for such a detailed supportive answer Rich! Very much appreciated. I may have a follow up when I try this out.
Thanks for such a detailed supportive answer Rich! Very much appreciated. I may have a follow up when I try this out.
@nc-cpl This is a feature that I hope to implement at some point! But it's not here today.
Stuart