@Opus 17 wrote:
My own preference would be to rollover the purely pre-tax 403(b) to a separate IRA account from the mixed traditional IRA you already have. However, it's not wrong or disallowed to put everything in one IRA. You need to keep track of the non-deductible contributions via form 8606. The yearly ending balances and yearly growth doesn't need to be tracked for tax purposes. . The taxable amount of your withdrawals will be determined using the basis you have tracked on form 8606.
And now that I think about it, depending on the size of the IRA, I might strongly consider converting it to a Roth IRA. You would pay the tax now on everything that is not your taxable basis, but you would never pay taxes on it again, and Roth IRAs do not have an RMD requirement at all. Then you could leave the 403(b) as-is, or roll it over into a traditional pre-tax IRA.
(Because the annual contribution limits to the IRA were always less than the limits for the 403(b), am I basing this plan partly on the expectation that the 403(b) is larger than the IRA, and you could use funds from the 403(b) to pay the tax on the conversion. You might want to talk to a financial planner.)
