Back Door Roth for spouse

[cminano]

I want my husband to be able to do a Back Roth IRA, but he has a significant amount in his traditional IRA and also has 2 prior smaller Roth IRA accounts.

I am looking into rolling his IRA over into a 401K through his employer or Fidelity who I hear does take these rollovers.

But my question is, when his IRA balance is back to zero and I do the annual contribution, would he need to open a new Roth IRA for conversion? Or convert it into one of these prior Roth IRA accounts? Can you have several Roth IRA accounts for the IRS.

 

[The White Coat Investor]

You can just use one of the prior ones. You can have an infinite number of Roth IRA accounts.

[jfoxcpacfp]

cminano wrote:

But my question is, when his IRA balance is back to zero and I do the annual contribution, would he need to open a new Roth IRA for conversion? Or convert it into one of these prior Roth IRA accounts? Can you have several Roth IRA accounts for the IRS.

Click to expand...

Yes, open a new Roth IRA for the conversion. While the IRS allows you to have multiple IRA accounts (Roth or TIRA), you will be mixing 2 classes of Roth IRAs into one. The original contributions in the old IRAs are available for distribution with no tax or penalty at any time. Back-door Roth contributions are subject to a 5-year withdrawal rule to avoid tax and penalty. Even if you never plan to touch the $$, better to take that cautionary step and segregate the funds.