@Bigratollie wrote:
You have clarified a lot thank you, my confusion was with the definition of basis But if I understand correctly now when you convert out of that traditional IRA, that wipes out your basis and you start over in the traditional that is
The "right way" to do a backdoor Roth contribution is to start with zero pre-tax amounts in any traditional IRA, or, that you convert all your pre-tax IRA contributions and gains and pay tax on the conversion, so that in future years you start with zero pre-tax amounts in any IRA. If you have pre-tax funds in any IRA, you can only do a partial conversion, leaving you with a partial basis, and it gets complicated to keep track of. To keep it clean, you have to convert all the pre-tax funds and pay tax, then it's super clean and easy after that.
