I was living a tax free retirement using only Roth IRAs. Then I inherited a traditional IRA and had to learn about RMDs and tax consequences. A good problem to have I guess.
Turns out the standard deduction with extra $12,000 MFJ bonus until 2028 can eliminate taxes on my new RMDs. And as a reminder, lots of LT cap gains is tax free too up to nearly $100,000 beyond the standard deduction. The first row on the income table is 10%, but for cap gains, it's zero. Wow.
So my plan to withdraw about $24,000 from the IRA every year is tax free even with my huge social security benefit. Yes, I am so aware of the SSA tax bomb. Every IRA dollar withdrawn exposes 85% of a SSA dollar to taxes.
They don't make a calculator yet to figure out the max IRA distribution and remain tax free. Binary search to determine $24000 was the max number.
Posted by derekdokoto2