Updated July 31, 2026. Quick answer: the Roth rollover is one of five doors for leftover 529 money, and it is often not the best one. The full menu: (1) change the beneficiary — free, instant, keeps compounding for a sibling, grandchild or even yourself; (2) the Roth rollover — $35k lifetime, slow, but converts education money into retirement money; (3) hold it — there is no deadline, and a future grandchild’s account opened by beneficiary change may be the highest-value use of all; (4) qualified uses you forgot — up to $10k of student loan repayment per borrower, K-12 tuition, apprenticeships; (5) nonqualified withdrawal — ordinary tax + 10% penalty on the earnings portion only, and the penalty (not the tax) is waived up to the amount of any scholarship received.
Choosing between the top two
Beneficiary change wins when family education is plausible anywhere on the horizon — it preserves every dollar and every option. The rollover wins when the education chapter is genuinely closed and the beneficiary is young enough for decades of Roth compounding. They also stack: change the beneficiary strategically, then roll from the account that best passes the 15-year test — mindful of the unresolved clock question covered there. The comparison in detail: rollover vs beneficiary change · this year’s rollover math: the calculator.
Five doors, no deadline – which is exactly why people choose badly.
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The number that surprises people who bought a long time ago
Downsizing is the one home sale where the gain is usually large and the exclusion usually still covers it. A couple who bought in 1994 for $180,000 and sell at $760,000 with $46,000 of selling costs have a realized gain of about $534,000 before improvements. That is above the $500,000 joint cap — but decades of capital improvements are exactly what brings it back under, and most sellers have never added them up.
Improvements are the lever, and the records are the constraint
A new roof, an addition, a replaced HVAC system, new windows, a finished basement: these add to basis. Repainting and repairs do not. Thirty years of improvements on a family home routinely total six figures, and every dollar of it reduces the gain dollar for dollar. The practical problem is documentary, not legal — the seller who kept receipts pays less than the identical seller who did not.
Why downsizers should check the net investment income tax separately
A retiree with modest ordinary income can still be pushed over the 3.8 percent NIIT threshold by the sale itself, because taxable gain is net investment income. The thresholds are $250,000 on a joint return and $200,000 otherwise, written into Section 1411(b) as fixed figures with no indexing. A sale that produces $120,000 of taxable gain on top of $180,000 of other income crosses the joint threshold and picks up 3.8 percent on the part above it.
The move itself may change the tax
Downsizing usually means moving, and sometimes across a state line. Some states tax the gain the federal exclusion just removed. If the sale and the move are in the same year, the order of the two matters, and it is worth checking the destination state before signing.
Related
Methodology
- Exclusion caps, the 2-of-5 test, the nonqualified-use allocation, the reduced-exclusion fraction and the depreciation carve-out are taken from the text of 26 U.S.C. 121. The 3.8 percent rate and its thresholds are from 26 U.S.C. 1411. Both were read on 2026-07-30.
- Section 121 caps and Section 1411 thresholds are written in the statute as fixed dollar amounts with no indexing mechanism, so they are built in. Long-term capital gain brackets ARE indexed annually, so your rate is an input rather than a lookup.
- Figures were computed by two independently written engines that agree to the cent, and the calculator on this page reproduces both exactly.
- Federal only. State treatment varies and some states do not follow the federal exclusion.
Educational estimate, not tax advice, and not a filed return. Federal only. Confirm anything that changes a filing decision with a CPA or tax attorney.
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