back-door traditional IRA in to roth question/guidance

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davidsonb
Posts: 11
Joined: Wed Oct 11, 2017 3:44 pm

back-door traditional IRA in to roth question/guidance

Post by davidsonb »

New to the forum and passive indexing/boglehead philosophy ( now a huge fan!) and looking for some guidance. Currently am switching my retirement/brokerage accounts from Waddell & Reed to Vanguard. I currently have a brokerage account, a traditional IRA, and a Roth IRA that I am transferring over to vanguard.

Age 35
Tax filings: Single
Fed tax: 33%
State tax: Wa, no state income tax!
Accounts:
401(k) at current job
Traditional IRA (old SEP IRA that was rolled into a traditional)
Roth IRA
Vanguard

My question is, would it be to my advantage to roll the t-IRA(about $38000) into the Roth this year(income too high to directly contribute to the Roth or deduct IRA contributions), I don’t expect my tax bracket to go down any time soon before retirement, if at all. I know some have recommended rolling the traditional ira into a 401k but my options in 401K all have relatively high fees (currently have all funds in vanguard growth in 401k which has fee of 0.68 which is the lowest of all my options in the 401k).
My accountant has recommended back-dooring the traditional ira into the roth even if I have to pay taxes but just wanted to get some other input. Would it be better to just keep the traditional IRA, contribute yearly and hope for a lower tax rate year in the future?
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