That answer makes no sense. When you do a conversion from a traditional IRA to a Roth, you pay tax on the amount converted. It should make no difference what the reason to do the conversion is, whether it is to accomplish an RMD or simply to move the money from one account to the other. Either way, you must pay the tax on the converted amount. Obviously, IRS just wants to prevent a Roth conversion from being used to satisfy the RMD, even though from a tax collection perspective it would make absolutely no difference. The IRS does not want its forced distributions going into a Roth, solely to prevent money from moving from a traditional IRA into a Roth. This contradicts express statutory public policy. I am not aware of any statutory basis for this. It is simply made up IRS tax policy to discourage Roth investments and to maximize tax collections, which actually is not the lawful statutory mission of the IRS. The IRS's directive is simply to collect fully and fairly taxes due, not to make up non-statutory rules and regulations that contradict statutory intent solely to maximize tax collections.
