Taxable income for retirees

[JimPK]

My wife and are are both retired and over 65 years old. We each receive our Social Security payments as our sole income. We have no other income sources. We would like to withdraw some of our retirement savings from our traditional IRA’s. I know that withdrawals from traditional IRA’s are treated as ordinary income for tax purposes. Are we allowed withdrawals up to the standard deduction limit before we owe any taxes? Both my wife and I are currently not subject to the mandatory distribution. 

[GuodaL]

Hi Jim,

That is a good question.

Traditional IRA distributions may be fully or partially taxable or not taxable at all, depending on how you treated your contributions before you retired. If you took a tax deduction for contributions you made to the plan in prior tax years, your distributions are likely taxable when you withdraw them, up to the amount you previously deducted.

Traditional IRA contributions are usually made with after-tax dollars, so if you did not take a deduction for some or all of your contributions, the withdrawals you make from these non-deducted contributions are not taxable. That is because you already paid taxes on the money you put in the account, and you didn't receive a tax benefit for those deposits. Similar to 401(k) plans, if you deducted traditional IRA contributions from your income in earlier tax years, you may want to limit your retirement withdrawals to reduce your potential tax burden.

Hope this answers your question. Feel free to reply if you have any additional questions.