topic Re: IRA withdrawls & contribution in same year in Retirement tax questions

IRA withdrawls & contribution in same year

Timothy F — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 07:38:51 GMT

We are married & file jointly. live in GA with a combined income of less than $65k annually. We purposely keep our income under a taxable amount. This fiscal year we wanted to withdraw $20k from IRA w/o incurring any tax liability. Using the TurboTax calculator it appears we could withdraw about $13,000 from a standard IRA and $7000 from a Roth and avoid any tax liability.

However, we decided to not spend the entire $20k and now want to contribute a portion ($5k) of what we withdrew from the regular IRA ($13k) and contribute it into the Roth IRA.

Is there a problem with doing that?

Are there any negative consequences we are not seeing?

Re: IRA withdrawls & contribution in same year

Opus 17 — Tue, 24 Oct 2023 17:07:44 GMT

You can't make any contributions to any IRA (traditional or Roth) unless you have compensation from working (generally wages or self-employment earnings on schedule C), plus a few odds and ends. See publication 590-a, table 1-1.

https://www.irs.gov/publications/p590a#en_US_2022_publink1000230364

You didn't discuss the source of your income. If you or your spouse have compensation, then one or both of you can make an IRA contribution up to the usual limit ($6500 under age 50, $7500 over age 50), or up to the amount of compensation from working, whichever is less. If you don't have compensation, you can't contribute to the Roth IRA.

Re: IRA withdrawls & contribution in same year

VolvoGirl — Tue, 24 Oct 2023 17:16:23 GMT

But you might be able to CONVERT it to the ROTH if it's within 60 days? @dmertz

Re: IRA withdrawls & contribution in same year

Opus 17 — Tue, 24 Oct 2023 17:23:52 GMT

@VolvoGirl wrote:

But you might be able to CONVERT it to the ROTH if it's within 60 days? @dmertz

Good point. If it was within 60 days it could be either put back into the account from where it was withdrawn, or rolled over into a different IRA. If that different IRA was a Roth IRA, then the rollover would be a special type of rollover called a conversion. But you have to tell the IRA custodian this is a rollover, and you report it on your tax return as a rollover, not as a contribution.

Re: IRA withdrawls & contribution in same year

dmertz — Tue, 24 Oct 2023 21:21:39 GMT

Opus 17 is somewhat correct, but a traditional IRA distribution that is deposited into a Roth IRA must be reported as a Conversion Contribution (box 3 of the Form 5498), not a Rollover Contribution (box 2), so you must tell the Roth IRA custodian that it's a Roth conversion. (It would be reported as a Rollover Contribution if the distribution instead came from a qualified retirement plan like a 401(k) rather than from a traditional IRA IRA.)