Clear Money Guide
What this guide covers
A quick view of the questions and evidence developed below.
2026 edition · the decision guide for Clear Money Guide’s Roth conversion series: what a conversion costs · state taxes · the IRMAA cliffs.
Updated July 25, 2026. Quick answer: A conversion is worth it when the rate you pay today is lower than the rate you (or your heirs) would pay later — and 2026 changed the calculus in one big way: the sunset urgency is gone. OBBBA made the 10%–37% structure permanent, so “convert before rates snap back” is no longer a reason. The durable reasons remain: low-income gap years before RMDs, the widow’s penalty, high-bracket heirs facing the 10-year rule, and paying the tax from outside funds. The durable reasons to wait: crossing into 32%+, the IRMAA cliffs after 63, and the senior-deduction clawback — quantified below.
Two corrections before the framework (verified on-page July 25, 2026)
A page-one guide still tells readers federal rates “go back to where they were starting in 2026” and that RMDs begin “at age 72.” Both are years stale: OBBBA (P.L. 119-21, signed July 4, 2025) made the current seven-rate structure permanent — there is no scheduled sunset, and Rev. Proc. 2025-32 sets the 2026 thresholds under it — and SECURE 2.0 §107 moved the RMD age to 73, rising to 75 for those born in 1960 or later (born-1959 filers should plan on 73 pending final regulations). If a conversion pitch leans on the sunset, it’s describing a law that no longer exists.
The five signals a conversion pays
(1) Gap years. Retired, but RMDs and Social Security haven’t started: taxable income collapses, and every dollar converted fills the 10–22% brackets that would otherwise go unused — the single strongest fact pattern. (2) The widow’s penalty. A surviving spouse files single: half the bracket widths, same portfolio — converting while both spouses are alive locks in joint-filer rates forever. (3) High-bracket heirs. Inherited traditional IRAs must drain within 10 years, taxed at the heirs’ peak-career rates; inherited Roths drain tax-free. (4) A big-deduction year. Large charitable gifts or business losses create cheap conversion room. (5) Outside funds for the tax. Converting 100 cents on the dollar is what makes the arithmetic work — details on the cost page.
When it stops paying
Crossing into 32%+ to escape a future 22–24% is a losing trade absent estate motives. The IRMAA cliffs: from the year you turn 63, conversion income can raise Medicare premiums two years out — $1 over a threshold costs the full tier (tables and cliff checker). The senior-deduction clawback (2025–2028), with the arithmetic shown: each 65+ filer’s $6,000 OBBBA deduction phases out at 6% of MAGI above $75,000 single / $150,000 joint. Losing deduction while adding income means each conversion dollar in the band is effectively taxed at your marginal rate times 1.06 per qualifying spouse — +1.32 points in the 22% bracket for a single 65+ filer, and up to +2.64 to +2.88 points for a couple with both spouses 65+ (6% × 2 × the 22–24% marginal rate), until the deduction is fully gone at $175,000 / $250,000 MAGI. And a planned move: converting the year before relocating from a high-tax state wastes the single cheapest lever on the board — twelve states tax conversions at $0.
Three worked personas (2026 schedules, arithmetic shown)
The gap-year couple — both 62, retired, $60,000 taxable income, converting $80,000: federal cost $13,520 (16.9% effective), all of it filling the 12% and 22% brackets they’d otherwise waste, with zero IRMAA exposure at 62. The textbook yes. The 67-year-old single filer — $40,000 taxable, converting $30,000: federal cost $5,560 (18.5%), cheap on brackets — but her MAGI now sits against the $75,000 phase-out line and the $109,000 IRMAA cliff two years before it matters most; a smaller annual conversion likely beats one big one. The high-income couple — 66 and 64, $180,000 taxable, converting $150,000: federal cost $35,372 (23.6%), plus the second IRMAA tier in 2028 (about $2,885 per enrollee per year) and a fully clawed-back senior deduction — worth it only if the estate math (heirs, widow’s penalty) is doing the heavy lifting.
The honest bottom line
Post-OBBBA, a Roth conversion is no longer a race against a sunset — it’s a bracket-arbitrage and estate-planning tool that rewards multi-year sequencing: fill the cheap brackets every gap year, stop at the cliffs, convert before 63 where possible, and let the state table tell you whether geography changes the answer. A plan that coordinates all four layers — brackets, state, IRMAA, and the deduction band — across five or ten years is exactly what a fee-only planner earns their fee on:
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Suggested citation: Clear Money Guide, “Is a Roth Conversion Worth It in 2026?,” clearmoneyguide.com/is-a-roth-conversion-worth-it/. Free to cite with attribution and a link. Verified July 25, 2026; persona arithmetic computed directly from Rev. Proc. 2025-32 schedules.
Primary sources
Run your own numbers. Roth conversion guardrail estimator — find the bracket ceiling for this year.
The question underneath all of these: can I retire? — answered as a gap in dollars a year and in working years, on assumptions you set and can see.
Do not know your bracket cap? The bracket calculator derives it from the 2026 IRS tables for all four filing statuses — it returns the room you have to the top of your current bracket, and the cost of filling every bracket above it.
The pro-rata rule is not fixed — the denominator is. The fraction is measured on 31 December, so moving pre-tax IRA balances into an employer 401(k) before then removes them from it entirely, and your after-tax basis is legally barred from following. Order of operations matters, and a SIMPLE IRA inside its first two years blocks it.