Question 1

How does a Traditional IRA calculator handle the upfront tax deduction on contributions?

Accepted Answer

A Traditional IRA calculator handles the upfront deduction by multiplying your annual contribution by your current marginal tax bracket and crediting that number back as immediate tax savings. If you contribute $7,000 and you are in the 32% federal bracket, the deduction puts $2,240 back in your pocket this year &#8212; the after-tax cost of funding the IRA is really $4,760, not $7,000. A good Traditional IRA calculator shows you that number explicitly, because it changes the way you think about what the contribution is actually costing. The catch: not every Traditional IRA contribution is deductible. The deduction only applies if (a) neither you nor your spouse is covered by a workplace retirement plan, or (b) you are covered but your income is below the phaseout band for your filing status. For 2026, a single filer covered at work loses the deduction entirely above roughly $89,000 of modified AGI. A married couple filing jointly where the contributing spouse is covered loses it above roughly $146,000. The Traditional IRA calculator on this page has a toggle for &#8220;deductible&#8221; so you can see what happens if the deduction is wiped out by your income. When the deduction is allowed, the math compounds in your favor. The $2,240 of tax savings, if invested for 30 years at a 7% pre-tax return, grows to roughly $17,000 of additional wealth &#8212; that is the real cost of forfeiting the deduction by putting the money into a non-deductible Traditional IRA instead. This is one of the reasons we tell clients in their peak earning years (35 to 55, partner or senior-level income) that the Traditional deduction is more valuable than people realize when they are running back-of-the-envelope math. There is a surprising piece most calculators bury: the upfront deduction is taxed exactly twice if you do it wrong. If you make a non-deductible contribution and then forget to file Form 8606 to track basis, the IRS has no record that those dollars were post-tax. When you withdraw the money 30 years later, every dollar gets taxed as ordinary income &#8212; including the basis. Half the population that does backdoor Roth conversions tracks this poorly. We see it constantly during return preparation when a client mentions an IRA contribution from five years ago that never made it onto an 8606. The Traditional IRA calculator also lets you set a different bracket for retirement. That second bracket determines what the IRS takes when you pull the money out. If you are 45 and in the 32% bracket today, and you expect to retire at 65 in the 22% bracket, the math says: defer 32%, pay 22%, keep the 10-point spread. Run it both ways in the Traditional IRA calculator and you will see how sensitive the result is to that bracket assumption. A few practical notes when you are using the Traditional IRA calculator to size the upfront deduction. First, your marginal bracket is what matters, not your effective rate. If you are in the 32% bracket, the next dollar you defer saves 32 cents &#8212; even if your overall rate is 24%. Second, state tax counts. New York City residents in the top state bracket get an additional roughly 10 to 13 points of deferral; the federal-only Traditional IRA calculator understates the real benefit. Third, the deduction has to fit in your return. If you have no earned income, the contribution is not allowed at all. The IRS spells this out in Publication 590-A, which is the authoritative source for Traditional IRA contribution and deduction rules. The deduction lives or dies on timing too. A 2026 Traditional IRA contribution can be made any time between January 1, 2026 and the tax filing deadline (April 15, 2027). That gives you 15 months of flexibility &#8212; you can fund the account in January if you want, or you can wait until you have your W-2s and 1099s in hand and know your actual income, then decide whether the deduction is worth it. We have clients who hold off until February or March specifically to confirm their MAGI before deciding between Traditional and Roth for the prior year. The Traditional IRA calculator is useful in both modes: rough projection ahead of time, exact decision at filing. One more layer the calculator does not display: the deduction&#8217;s value depends on what else is on your return. If you are claiming the saver&#8217;s credit (low-income filers), the Traditional contribution can push you into a higher credit tier. If you are running close to a deduction-phaseout cliff for student loan interest, education credits, or the QBI deduction, the IRA deduction can pull your AGI back under the line and rescue those other write-offs. The Traditional IRA calculator just shows the IRA-side number; the multiplier effect on other deductions can make the total tax savings noticeably bigger. This is why we run the Traditional IRA calculator in tandem with a full return projection during planning engagements. A real-world example helps make the deduction math concrete. Take a 42-year-old physician earning $400,000, married filing jointly, with a non-working spouse. The spouse is not covered at work and the physician is &#8212; so the relevant phaseout for the physician&#8217;s contribution is the $126K-$146K band, putting them above. The physician&#8217;s contribution becomes non-deductible. The spouse, however, is not covered at work, so the spousal IRA falls under the much higher $236K-$246K phaseout. At $400,000, both are still above. Both contributions become non-deductible Traditional contributions. The Traditional IRA calculator would show $0 of upfront deduction value, which is exactly the signal that this couple should be looking at backdoor Roth conversions instead. The calculator tells you what is going on; the planning tells you what to do about it. The bigger point is that a Traditional IRA calculator is most useful when you treat the deduction as part of the contribution cost, not as a bonus. Run the numbers as &#8220;I am putting in $7,000 that really costs me $4,760 after tax,&#8221; not as &#8220;I am putting in $7,000 and getting $2,240 back.&#8221; The reframe changes how you compare it against a Roth contribution at the same dollar level. For a full side-by-side, our tax strategy consulting covers Traditional versus Roth versus backdoor Roth for clients in higher brackets, and the tax strategy guides hub has the underlying logic written out.

Question 2

Does a Traditional IRA calculator account for the 2026 deduction phaseouts if I have a workplace retirement plan?

Accepted Answer

A proper Traditional IRA calculator should account for the deduction phaseouts &#8212; and the one on this page does. Whether your contribution is deductible depends on three things: your filing status, whether you (or your spouse) are an &#8220;active participant&#8221; in a workplace plan, and your modified adjusted gross income. The 2026 phaseout bands matter because falling above them turns a deductible Traditional IRA contribution into a non-deductible one, which is a very different financial decision. The 2026 phaseout numbers, straight from the IRS: a single filer who is covered by a workplace plan starts losing the deduction at roughly $79,000 of MAGI and loses it entirely at roughly $89,000. A married couple filing jointly where the contributing spouse is covered phases out between roughly $126,000 and $146,000. A married couple where the spouse (not the contributor) is covered has a much higher band, roughly $236,000 to $246,000. If neither spouse is covered by any retirement plan at work, there is no income limit at all &#8212; the deduction is fully allowed regardless of how much you earn. The Traditional IRA calculator on this page lets you select the relevant scenario before it computes whether your contribution gets the deduction. What counts as &#8220;covered&#8221; is a question we get every tax season. The IRS uses the box 13 checkbox on Form W-2 (&#8220;Retirement plan&#8221;). If that box is checked, you are considered an active participant for the year &#8212; even if you contributed zero dollars to the 401(k). If your employer made a profit-sharing or pension contribution on your behalf and you were eligible, you are covered. This is the part that surprises people: you can be &#8220;covered&#8221; without having put a single dollar in. The phaseouts use modified adjusted gross income, not regular AGI. For most filers MAGI and AGI are the same, but a few add-backs matter &#8212; student loan interest, foreign earned income exclusion, and a couple of others. The Traditional IRA calculator on this page asks for AGI and assumes the modifications net to zero for typical filers; if you have foreign income or you are a graduate student claiming the student loan interest deduction, run the number with a tax professional first. Inside the phaseout band, the deduction shrinks proportionally. If you are single, covered at work, and your MAGI is $84,000 (right in the middle of the $79K-$89K band), the deduction is reduced by 50%. So a $7,000 contribution gets a $3,500 deduction, not the full $7,000. The remaining $3,500 is treated as a non-deductible contribution that needs to be tracked on Form 8606. The Traditional IRA calculator can handle this gracefully if you set the &#8220;deductible portion&#8221; manually; some calculators round to either fully-deductible or fully-non-deductible and miss the partial cases. Here is the surprising part: being above the phaseout does not stop you from making a Traditional IRA contribution. It just makes the contribution non-deductible. A lot of people assume that being &#8220;phased out&#8221; means they cannot contribute at all &#8212; not true. You can still put $7,000 ($8,000 if 50+) into a Traditional IRA. You just do not get the deduction. The growth is still tax-deferred, and the basis is tracked on Form 8606. But here is where it gets interesting. If you are above the phaseout and also above the Roth IRA income limit, the non-deductible Traditional IRA is usually a stepping stone to a backdoor Roth conversion. You contribute non-deductibly, then convert immediately to a Roth. The Traditional IRA calculator does not handle the backdoor mechanics, but it does help you see what a non-deductible contribution looks like on its own &#8212; mostly because the &#8220;upfront tax savings&#8221; column goes to zero, which makes the case for the conversion easier to see. One trap to flag: if you already have a large pre-tax Traditional IRA balance, the backdoor Roth conversion triggers the pro-rata rule and most of your conversion becomes taxable. Run the Traditional IRA calculator alongside the conversation about whether to roll an old IRA into your current 401(k) (which gets it out of the pro-rata calculation). For clients with this fact pattern, we usually walk through it during a tax planning engagement before any money moves. Coverage status can also change within a year, which throws people off. If you start the year covered by a workplace 401(k) and quit in October to go independent, you are still &#8220;covered&#8221; for the year and the phaseout applies. The IRS uses the W-2 box 13 checkbox for the calendar year, not your status at year-end. A Traditional IRA calculator that ignores this nuance will tell you the deduction is fully available when it actually is not. We see this question every January from clients who left corporate jobs mid-year to start consulting practices. One detail that matters for couples filing jointly: if both spouses are working, both can contribute to their own Traditional IRA up to the $7,000 / $8,000 limit each, doubling the household total to $14,000 (or $16,000 if both are 50+). The deduction phaseout, however, applies separately to each spouse based on their own workplace coverage. So a couple where one spouse is covered at work and the other is not will hit the joint $126K-$146K band for the covered spouse and the joint $236K-$246K band for the uncovered spouse. The Traditional IRA calculator on this page can handle each contribution separately; just run the calculator twice if both spouses are contributing and the deduction status differs. The takeaway: a Traditional IRA calculator that does not let you set workplace-plan coverage and filing status is missing half the math. The deduction is the whole reason most people use the Traditional structure. If you cannot see whether you qualify, you cannot tell whether the Traditional or the Roth is the better choice for the year. Use the toggle on this calculator, and if you are right at the edge of a phaseout, time your contribution &#8212; you can still make a 2026 contribution up until April 15, 2027. Our helpful guides section has more detail on the active-participant rules if you want to go deeper.

Question 3

Can a Traditional IRA calculator project required minimum distributions starting at age 73?

Accepted Answer

A Traditional IRA calculator can do basic RMD projections, but a serious RMD model usually lives in a separate tool. The calculator on this page projects your balance through the year you plan to start withdrawing, and it can apply an after-tax adjustment to the ending balance &#8212; but it does not run the full year-by-year RMD schedule after age 73. For that, use our RMD calculator, which applies the IRS Uniform Lifetime Table divisor for each year of life expectancy. Here is what the Traditional IRA calculator does handle: it shows you the balance at the year you start withdrawing. If that year is 73, the calculator gives you the starting RMD base. The first RMD divisor in 2026 for age 73 is 26.5. So a $1,200,000 Traditional IRA balance at age 73 produces a first-year RMD of $1,200,000 / 26.5 = $45,283. That amount is taxable as ordinary income in the year of distribution and reported on Form 1099-R. SECURE 2.0 changed the RMD start age. Pre-2020 it was 70&#189;. The first SECURE Act moved it to 72. SECURE 2.0 moved it to 73 starting in 2023, with another bump to age 75 for people born in 1960 or later (kicking in in 2033). The Traditional IRA calculator on this page assumes age 73 as the default RMD start, which is correct for anyone born between 1951 and 1959. If you are younger than that, set the retirement age input to 75 to see the projection through a later starting point. The surprising piece of RMD math: the divisor gets smaller every year, so the percentage you have to withdraw grows. At 73 it is roughly 3.77% of the balance. At 80 it is 4.95%. At 90 it is 8.77%. The IRS effectively forces an accelerating withdrawal rate, which is why a Traditional IRA calculator&#8217;s flat-rate &#8220;withdraw $50,000 a year&#8221; assumption is a poor approximation of what actually happens to a taxable account through your 80s and 90s. The IRS publishes the full Uniform Lifetime Table at retirement-topics-required-minimum-distributions. The other RMD wrinkle a Traditional IRA calculator does not capture: aggregation. If you have three Traditional IRAs at three different custodians, the IRS calculates the RMD by adding all three balances, dividing by the divisor for your age, and producing one annual RMD. You can take the full RMD from any single account &#8212; you do not have to draw proportionally from each. (This is different from 401(k)s, where RMDs must be taken from each plan separately.) The Traditional IRA calculator on this page projects one account at a time, so if you have multiple IRAs, run each one and add the balances before applying the divisor. One thing worth flagging: the penalty for missing an RMD used to be 50% of the missed distribution, which was brutal. SECURE 2.0 cut it to 25% (and 10% if you correct the missed RMD within a correction window). The Traditional IRA calculator does not model the penalty &#8212; it should not need to, because nobody plans to miss an RMD &#8212; but if you have inherited an IRA from a parent or grandparent and you are figuring out the rules, the penalty math matters. For high-net-worth clients near retirement, we usually pair the Traditional IRA calculator with a Qualified Charitable Distribution analysis. A QCD lets anyone 70&#189; or older send up to $108,000 (2026 limit, inflation-indexed) directly from a Traditional IRA to a qualified charity. It satisfies the RMD, does not count as taxable income, and bypasses the standard deduction issue for people who would otherwise lose the benefit of charitable giving. The Traditional IRA calculator does not have a QCD field, but for clients giving meaningful amounts to charity in retirement, this is one of the biggest tax planning opportunities in the IRA rules. Run the calculator first to see what your projected RMD looks like, then look at whether a QCD makes sense in your bracket. The Traditional IRA calculator also helps with the question of which spouse&#8217;s table to use. Most retirees use the Uniform Lifetime Table, but if your spouse is more than 10 years younger and is your sole beneficiary, you use the Joint Life and Last Survivor Table instead, which produces smaller RMDs (and bigger deferred balances). The calculator on this page assumes the Uniform Lifetime Table by default, which is correct for the vast majority of filers. If you have a younger spouse, the actual RMD is lower than the projection shows. If you are 5 to 10 years out from RMDs and your projected Traditional IRA balance is large &#8212; over $1.5 million is the rough threshold where this matters &#8212; the calculator is also useful for stress-testing Roth conversion sequencing. Converting in low-income years between retirement and 73 can shrink the future RMD base and the lifetime tax bill. We cover that in tax strategy consulting for clients who want the model run with their actual numbers. One more consideration for clients planning their RMD trajectory: the still-working exception applies to 401(k)s but not to IRAs. If you are still employed at 73 and you have a 401(k) at your current employer (and you do not own more than 5% of the company), you can delay RMDs from that 401(k) until you actually retire. There is no such exception for Traditional IRAs &#8212; RMDs start at 73 regardless of employment status. This matters when you are deciding whether to roll an old 401(k) into a Traditional IRA. Once it is in the IRA, you cannot un-rope it from the RMD start age. Run the Traditional IRA calculator before consolidating accounts, especially if you plan to keep working past 73. A final practical point: even if the Traditional IRA calculator does not run year-by-year RMDs, you can approximate the after-RMD trajectory by hand. Run the calculator to age 73 with growth only. Then in each subsequent year, divide the prior balance by the Uniform Lifetime divisor (start at 26.5 for 73, drop roughly 1 each year until 90), subtract the RMD, grow the remainder by your return rate, repeat. The Traditional IRA calculator gives you the starting point; the rest is mechanical arithmetic that any spreadsheet can finish. For deeper modeling, our high-net-worth clients page describes the planning work we do for retirees with seven-figure IRA balances.

Question 4

Why does a Traditional IRA calculator show a smaller after-tax balance than a Roth IRA calculator at the same contribution?

Accepted Answer

A Traditional IRA calculator shows a smaller after-tax balance than a Roth IRA calculator when your assumed retirement tax bracket is equal to or lower than your current bracket &#8212; but only after you apply tax at withdrawal. The pre-tax balance is usually the same. The difference is when (and at what rate) the IRS gets paid. This is the single most misunderstood number on either calculator, so it is worth walking through. Here is the setup. Suppose you contribute $7,000 a year for 30 years at a 7% return. Both a Traditional IRA calculator and a Roth IRA calculator will project a final pre-tax balance of roughly $660,000. The pre-tax growth is identical. What is different is the tax treatment. The Roth contribution costs you $7,000 of after-tax money each year. If you are in the 24% bracket, that is $9,210 of pre-tax earnings used to fund the $7,000 contribution. The Roth balance comes out tax-free, so the after-tax balance at retirement is also $660,000. The Traditional contribution costs you only $5,320 of after-tax money each year ($7,000 minus the 24% deduction). If you are in the 24% bracket at retirement, you withdraw the $660,000 and pay $158,400 in tax (24% of the balance). Your after-tax retirement balance is $501,600. That is the number a Traditional IRA calculator displays &#8212; and yes, it looks smaller than the Roth&#8217;s $660,000. But the comparison is incomplete. The Traditional IRA freed up $1,680 a year ($7,000 minus $5,320) that you could invest in a taxable brokerage account. If you invest that side-pot at the same 7% return for 30 years, after capital gains tax on the way out, you end up with another $130,000 to $150,000 in after-tax wealth. Add that to the Traditional IRA&#8217;s $501,600 and the apples-to-apples comparison gets very close to the Roth&#8217;s $660,000. The Traditional IRA calculator does not always show the side-pot, which is why the number can look smaller than it should. Look for a calculator that runs the &#8220;equivalent contribution&#8221; comparison: same after-tax contribution to both, side-pot invested for the Traditional. That apples-to-apples version is the only fair way to compare the two structures. Here is the surprising piece. The Traditional IRA calculator&#8217;s after-tax balance only loses to the Roth&#8217;s when your retirement bracket is the same or higher than today. If your retirement bracket is lower, the Traditional wins outright. A client at 37% today who retires at 22% is paying tax at a 15-point lower rate &#8212; the Traditional IRA calculator should show that as a substantial wealth advantage, not a loss. There are other places where the Roth IRA calculator wins independent of bracket math: Roth has no required minimum distributions for the original owner, so the money keeps compounding tax-free into your 80s and 90s. Roth has better estate planning for non-spouse heirs &#8212; they get 10 years of tax-free withdrawals. And Roth contributions (not earnings) can be withdrawn at any age for any reason without penalty, which is useful flexibility for younger savers. For clients in their peak earning years, the Traditional usually wins on raw bracket arbitrage. For younger clients and for clients with large taxable estates, the Roth usually wins on flexibility and estate features. The Traditional IRA calculator and the Roth IRA calculator together let you see the trade-off, but the right answer for any specific client requires looking at current bracket, expected retirement bracket, taxable estate, and whether the dollars are even available for the Roth (income limits and backdoor mechanics matter). One more thing the Traditional IRA calculator&#8217;s smaller after-tax balance hides: it depends entirely on the retirement bracket you assume. If you pick 22% and you actually retire in 30% (large pension, big rental portfolio, RMDs from a $3 million Traditional IRA), the Traditional balance shrinks further than the calculator suggests. Conservative planning means stress-testing both calculators at multiple retirement-bracket assumptions before committing to a structure. We do this for high-net-worth clients as part of the broader retirement plan, because the bracket assumption is the single biggest lever. There is one more layer most calculators ignore: the future of tax rates themselves. The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act lowered individual rates through 2025, after which Congress will revisit the bracket structure. If rates rise broadly (a real possibility given federal deficits), the Roth IRA calculator&#8217;s tax-free advantage grows and the Traditional&#8217;s tax-deferred advantage shrinks. Conversely, if rates fall, Traditional wins by more. Neither calculator can predict tax policy; what they can do is let you re-run the math at different retirement-bracket assumptions to see how sensitive your decision is to that uncertainty. We tell clients to assume retirement rates 2 to 3 points above today&#8217;s posted brackets as a conservative default, which usually nudges close calls toward Roth. One detail the Traditional IRA calculator does not handle that the Roth IRA calculator should not need to: the 10% early withdrawal penalty. Pull money out of a Traditional IRA before age 59&#189; and you owe a 10% penalty on top of the regular income tax. Pull contributions (not earnings) out of a Roth at any age and there is no penalty &#8212; Roth contributions are always accessible. That accessibility gap is one of the underrated reasons younger savers should lean Roth. A Traditional IRA effectively locks the money up; a Roth IRA gives you an emergency-fund of last resort. Neither calculator quantifies that flexibility directly, but it is a real factor in the decision. The short version: the Traditional IRA calculator&#8217;s smaller after-tax balance is real, but it is half the picture. Run it with the equivalent-contribution comparison, look at both retirement brackets, and consider the flexibility and estate features separately. For a full read of the Traditional versus Roth question, our tax strategy guides hub has more depth.

Question 5

How do I use a Traditional IRA calculator to decide between a Traditional and a Roth contribution this year?

Accepted Answer

The fastest way to use a Traditional IRA calculator to decide between Traditional and Roth is to run it twice with the same dollar contribution, then compare the after-tax balances at retirement using realistic brackets. But the answer changes a lot depending on what numbers you plug in, so the inputs matter more than the calculator itself. Start with the basics. Pull last year&#8217;s tax return and find your marginal federal bracket. That is the rate on your last dollar of income, not your effective rate. If you are filing jointly with $300,000 of taxable income in 2026, you are in the 24% bracket. If you live in a high-tax state, add the state marginal rate &#8212; New York City residents at that income level are paying roughly 6.85% state plus 3.876% city, so the true marginal rate is around 35%. That is the number the Traditional IRA calculator should use for current-year deduction value. Next, estimate your retirement bracket. This is the input that determines the Traditional IRA&#8217;s payoff. We tell clients to use three numbers: the bracket you would be in if all retirement income came from Social Security and a modest pension (often 12% to 22%), the bracket you would be in if you also pull $80,000 to $100,000 a year from IRAs and 401(k)s (often 22% to 24%), and the bracket if you have a large taxable estate generating dividends and capital gains (often 32% or higher). Run the Traditional IRA calculator at all three retirement brackets and look at the spread. The simplest decision rule, after you have run both: if your projected retirement bracket is more than 5 percentage points lower than your current bracket, the Traditional IRA calculator usually shows a bigger after-tax balance and Traditional wins. If the retirement bracket is equal to or higher than today, the Roth IRA calculator wins on flexibility and estate features, and you should pick Roth. The 5-point cushion accounts for uncertainty in future tax policy &#8212; rates could rise, and brackets could compress. If you are right on the edge, lean Roth, because Roth gives you optionality that Traditional does not. Here is where it gets interesting. If you are above the Roth income limit for direct contribution (single $165K, MFJ $246K in 2026), the Traditional IRA calculator output for a non-deductible contribution shows what your &#8220;non-deductible Traditional&#8221; looks like &#8212; the same pre-tax growth, but no upfront deduction. For most people in that income range, the right move is a backdoor Roth conversion: contribute non-deductibly, convert to Roth within a few days, pay tax on the (typically minimal) growth between contribution and conversion, and end up with Roth dollars at the back end. The Traditional IRA calculator does not model the backdoor sequence directly, but its non-deductible projection shows the &#8220;before&#8221; side of the conversion. The surprising thing most people miss: timing matters more than people realize. You can make a 2026 Traditional IRA contribution any time from January 1, 2026 through April 15, 2027. That gives you 15 months to decide what to do with the prior year&#8217;s contribution. If you are not sure whether to go Traditional or Roth in October 2026, you can wait until February 2027 when you know what your 2026 income actually looked like, run the Traditional IRA calculator with the real numbers, and pick the right answer. We move clients between Traditional and Roth at tax filing time fairly often. One trap to flag: if you contribute to a Traditional IRA and later realize you should have done a Roth, you can recharacterize &#8212; but only for the contribution year. You have until the tax filing deadline (plus extensions) to recharacterize a contribution from Traditional to Roth or vice versa. Note that the recharacterization rule was limited by the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act: you can no longer recharacterize a Roth conversion, only an initial contribution. Run the Traditional IRA calculator before December 31 of the contribution year and you avoid the issue entirely. For business owners and self-employed filers, the Traditional IRA calculator is just one of several retirement options worth running. A SEP IRA, solo 401(k), or defined benefit plan can shelter substantially more than $7,000 &#8212; sometimes $60,000 to $250,000 or more depending on age and income. If you are a business owner running the Traditional IRA calculator and the numbers look small relative to your savings goals, the calculator is telling you something useful: you have outgrown the IRA structure. Move the conversation to a SEP or solo 401(k). Our services page covers the structures we set up for business owners in this position. Practical workflow we use with clients: run the Traditional IRA calculator with current bracket, expected retirement bracket, and 30-year horizon. Then run the Roth IRA calculator with the same dollar contribution and the same horizon. Compare after-tax balances. Then layer in the qualitative factors: do you want RMDs at 73 (Traditional has them, Roth does not)? Are you leaving money to heirs (Roth wins on inherited IRA rules)? Are you planning to fund the contribution from cash flow or from a bonus (Traditional&#8217;s deduction freeing up tax dollars matters more if cash flow is tight)? One more factor that should tilt the call: the deduction&#8217;s spillover effect on other parts of the return. The Traditional IRA deduction lowers AGI, which can pull you back under thresholds for the QBI deduction, the child tax credit phaseout, the net investment income tax, IRMAA Medicare surcharges (if you are near 63 and watching them), and various state-level credits. None of those show up on the Traditional IRA calculator&#8217;s face, but they can swing the practical value of the deduction by hundreds or thousands of dollars. If you are sitting near any of those cliffs, the Traditional contribution is worth more than the calculator alone suggests. If the calculator output is close and the qualitative factors do not break the tie, default to Roth for younger clients and Traditional for clients in their peak earning years. That is what the math and the empirical pattern usually point to. For a deeper look at your specific situation, the services hub covers our planning engagements, and you can start with the new client inquiry form. The full IRA rule set is in IRS Publication 590-A if you want to verify the contribution and deduction numbers yourself.

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