Tax-deferred accounts are great, until they aren’t—when we have to pay taxes on our withdrawals.
Millions of Americans have tax-deferred accounts, pundits laud them, companies help fund them, institutions service them and markets help them grow. But when it comes time to empty them, often the only person to guide us is Uncle Sam, who’s patiently awaiting his cut.
Efficiently managing 30 years of retirement withdrawals from a 401(k), 403(b), IRA or other tax-deferred account is just as important as the 40 years of accumulation. While we could just follow the government’s required minimum distribution (RMD) rules beginning at age 70½, who says these rules are optimal? Granted, the normal playbook is to postpone paying taxes for as long as possible. Heck, “deferred” is the way these accounts are described.
Yet deferring may not be right for everyone. There are some widely discussed reasons to make earlier and larger withdrawals from tax-deferred accounts—to convert this money to a Roth IRA, to avoid future tax rate increases, to use the money while still young and healthy, and to reduce future RMDs by making withdrawals earlier in our 60s, when we might be in a lower tax bracket.
Married couples have an often-overlooked additional reason to consider extra early withdrawals: Their taxes will almost certainly increase after the first spouse dies. Think of this as the widow or widower’s tax. It’s is an issue I recently discovered when I was weighing how much to withdraw from the retirement accounts owned by my wife and me.
What’s the problem? First, the standard deduction for the surviving spouse will typically decline from $24,400, the 2019 level for those married filing jointly, to $12,200 for a single individual. In addition, the surviving spouse will lose the additional “over age 65” deduction of $1,300 for the deceased spouse.
Assuming the same income and a 22% marginal tax rate, the surviving spouse’s tax bill will increase $2,970 from lost deductions alone. On top of this, tax rates also increase. While the change to filing as a single individual increases tax rates by only 2 percentage points for a large portion of middle-income surviving spouses, tax rates can jump as much as eight to 11 percentage points at certain income levels, as shown in the table below for 2019.
Married couples with annual incomes around $40,000 to $80,000, or above $160,000, are likely to get hit with significantly higher tax rates upon the first spouse’s death. Today’s tax rates are unusually low. That means the tax penalty could be even higher, depending on the results of 2020s election. It could also be higher after 2025, when today’s low tax rates are slated to return to pre-2018’s higher levels.
How can married couples take advantage of today’s low tax rates? If their taxable income is around or only moderately above $39,500 in 2019, couples might consider additional withdrawals from tax-deferred accounts, perhaps up to a taxable income of $78,950. That’s the equivalent of $103,350 in total income, once you figure in the standard deduction. The married marginal tax rate remains a miserly 12% at these income levels. Paying taxes at this rate may allow the surviving spouse to avoid paying taxes at a much higher rate later on.
Likewise, if income is already above $160,000, couples might consider tax-deferred account withdrawals to achieve a taxable income of as much as $321,450, equal to $345,850 in total income, after factoring in the standard deduction. Even at this very high income, the marginal tax rate remains a relatively modest 24%.
Keep in mind that this additional taxable income may trigger higher taxes on your Social Security benefit or higher Medicare premiums, and perhaps both. Don’t plan to spend these extra withdrawals in the near future? The best strategy is probably to convert this money to a Roth IRA.