I have lost $200k in stock purchase. If I take $200k from my rollover IRA, do I have to pay tax on the withdraw? Meaning: ($200k income) - ($200k loss) = 0 Regards

[Critter]

NIce thought but it doesn't work that way ... the ordinary income from the IRA cannot be netted directly against Cap losses.  The Cap Loss can only be netted against Cap Gain ... then if you have losses left over you can only take $3000 per year against ordinary income until it's used up or you die.  If you have winners in your portfolio then you should sell off them to work against your losers. 

[macuser_22]

Assuming that you mean that the loss was from investments within the IRA:

One of the advantages of an IRA is that the money can grow tax free since you are not taxed on any gains within an IRA, but on the other hand you also cannot claim any losses within the IRA either.

But there is one exception:

If you have a loss on your traditional IRA investment, you can recognize (include) the loss on your income tax return, but only when all the amounts in all your traditional IRA accounts have been distributed to you and the total distributions are less than your unrecovered basis, if any.

Your basis is the total amount of the nondeductible contributions in your traditional IRAs.

You claim the loss as a miscellaneous itemized deduction, subject to the 2%-of-adjusted-gross-income limit that applies to certain miscellaneous itemized deductions on Schedule A (Form 1040). Any such losses are added back to taxable income for purposes of calculating the alternative minimum tax.

In the case of a rollover IRA (assume that it was a 401K rollover) then it is not likely that there is any basis (after-tax money) in the IRA at all.   Even when there is basis, for most people the amount is small and not likely to exceed 2% of AGI.

[macuser_22]

Above answer edited.