Your financial advisor may be all fired up about prepaying tax on an IRA, converting it into a totally tax-free Roth IRA. Is this a great idea? Sometimes. Not always.

The recent election of a tax-cutter to the White House should have diminished the fervor of Roth fans. One of their arguments was that low tax rates passed in 2017 under then President Trump are scheduled to expire at the end of 2025, so you should jump on an opportunity to prepay. Now, there’s a good chance the low rates will be extended. There’s less reason to hurry.

The power shift in Washington to President Trump and Republican control of both the Senate and House is just one thing that should make you re-examine a Roth conversion plan. A conversion cannot be undone. Before proceeding, see if any of these 11 reasons for not Rothifying applies to you.

This defeats the purpose of converting.

Example: You are and will be in the 30% bracket (federal and state combined). Converting now, while extracting $30,000 for the taxes, leaves $70,000 in the account. Assume the portfolio doubles by the time you take the money out. You now have $140,000 of spending money. But with no conversion, your $100,000 would have doubled to $200,000 and after taxes you’d have the same $140,000.

What you have gained by converting: nothing. Why bother? Why expose yourself to the downsides of converting (see #2 through #11 below)?

There are hypothetical situations in which you could come out ahead while using $30,000 from the account to pay tax, but they are not worth the mental effort.

For comparison, see what happens if you do use outside money to cover the tax bill. You’re taking $30,000 you have sitting around, plus $100,000 in a pretax retirement shelter, and turning all that into a $100,000 aftertax shelter. It doubles to $200,000. In effect, your $30,000 grows, under the shelter, to $60,000 in spending money. That is, you have used the conversion to shelter........

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