Retirement tax questions

That's what financial planners are for, really, not people who know how to fill out tax forms.

 

Your "full retirement age" is probably 66 and 10 months.  If you take retirement before that age, your benefit will be reduced, and your benefit will also be reduced if you continue to work.  After your full retirement age, your benefit won't be reduced from working.  The longer you delay retirement (up to age 70) the higher your SS benefit will be, but you really have to think about your health and life expectancy, and whether you would be better off getting $X for 30 years or $X plus for 27 years (for example).

 

The IRA will be taxable, plus it can make your SS benefit taxable as well.  The math here gets complicated and I suspect that financial planners for older persons have pretty good calculators, better than I have.  But I can imagine that in a year you don't draw from the IRA, you might pay zero or 10% tax on the SS benefit, and in a year you draw from the IRA, you would pay 22% on the IRA plus 22% on the SS benefit.  That would suggest that you should empty the IRA before you apply for social security.  But there are many other factors at play so don't take that as advice, just one possible scenario.

 

Also, if the original owner of the IRA died after their RMD beginning year, you are required to take an RMD over the 10 years (or the remaining 8 years) in addition to the requirement to draw down the account to zero by 10 years.  The RMD rule is not final, so you won't be penalized for missing the RMD for 2021, 2022 or 2023, but expect that you will need to take an RMD starting in 2024 for sure.