Roth IRA Conversion

I really don’t know why you can’t do that in one step. And I can’t, at the moment, point directly to the official guidance that says you can do it. But I’m pretty sure you can, and I know I’ve seen official guidance that says you can.

Legally, you can do it in one step. But you need to find a custodian that will allow you to do it in one step. So, operationally, it may not be possible at eTrade, if their procedures don’t allow it.

This isn’t the specific regulation, but according to this chart https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-tege/rollover_chart.pdf you can roll directly from a qualified plan (like a 401(k)) to a Roth IRA

AJ

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At Etrade I have a Roth IRA and a Traditonal 401k.

Are all of your contributions pre-tax? It makes calculating the tax basis of the rollover simple. All of it is taxable. If you are attempting to convert after-tax contributions, it is more complicated.

Are all of your contributions pre-tax? It makes calculating the tax basis of the rollover simple. All of it is taxable. If you are attempting to convert after-tax contributions, it is more complicated.

Actually, it can be quite simple with after-tax contributions. You roll those directly to a Roth IRA. Then you roll the pre-tax to a Traditional IRA, and do partial conversions (which is what the OP indicated they wanted to do - partial conversions.)

AJ

“I have account# XXXXX as a 401k at Etrade. I want to move $XXX from it to my Roth IRA account #XXXX. I believe that I should be able to do that, but may need to transfer the money first to a regular IRA account, and then convert the money from there to my Roth IRA. What forms or web pages or such do I need to use to accomplish this? Thank you”

Over the weekend I put foo1’s suggestion in play. Etrade response is 5-7 business days.

So today I tried the Etrade Retirement Center by phone one more time. I was quite pleased to have had the good fortune of getting through fairly quickly to a woman who understood what I want to do and how to do it. So partials are now possible directly from my 401k to my Roth IRA. The process is more cumbersome than I’d like it to be in that it requires paper submissions, but it’s doable.

If I were to encounter another Etrade customer wishing to do the same partial rollovers, I’d give them the same advice AJ gave above: Open a TIRA, transfer to there and complete partial transfers at-will using the transfer page on the website.

@AJ: Thanks for dialing me in to the custodial agreement. I read it and found this language for the transfer of assets into a Roth IRA…“anything permissible by Code”. So I knew it was possible. But as I stated above your path is far more friendly. Best option for sure.

Once again, thank you to all who helped me here.

Bimmer

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