Ongoing Retirement Tax Planning
A plan built once and never revisited stops being true. Annual forward-looking tax strategy, coordinated with your CPA, as income, law, and circumstances change.
The short answer
Ongoing retirement tax planning revisits the projection each year. Balances move, tax law changes, and Required Minimum Distributions grow as the divisor shrinks, so the conversion amount and withdrawal order that were right last year usually need adjusting.
A retirement tax plan is not a document. It is a decision made every autumn, for twenty-five years.
The projection built at retirement is right on the day it is written. Then balances move, spending changes, a spouse stops working, tax law is rewritten, and the RMD divisor shrinks. A plan that is never revisited slowly stops describing the household it was built for.
What happens each year
Re-run the projection
Actual balances, actual spending, current law. The conversion amount that was right last year is rarely right this year.
Size this year’s conversion
Against the bracket and against the IRMAA thresholds, which read the return from two years earlier.
Set the withdrawal order
Which account funds the year, given everything else already recognized.
Handle the RMD
The required amount is the prior year-end balance divided by an IRS life expectancy factor, and the divisor falls with age, so the required percentage climbs even when the balance does not.
Use the charitable route where it fits
A qualified charitable distribution from an IRA after 70½ satisfies the RMD and stays out of income, up to an annual indexed limit. For households that give and do not itemize, it is often better than writing a check.
Coordinate with your CPA
The strategy and the return have to agree, and the CPA sees the year after it closed.
Who this is for
Households already in retirement, or within a year of it, who have a plan and want it to stay accurate. It suits people with large pre-tax balances, charitable intent, or income that varies year to year.
The RMD exposure guide covers what the required distributions do to a bracket over time.
Timing is the whole thing
Most of these decisions expire on December 31. A conversion cannot be made in April for the prior year. A QCD cannot be backdated. Capital gains harvesting has the same deadline.
Which makes autumn the working season: income for the year is mostly known, and there is still time to act on it. A plan reviewed in April is a plan reviewed too late.
Questions about ongoing retirement tax planning
Talk it through
The first conversation takes thirty minutes, and it is most useful while this year’s decisions are still open.
Educational only. Tax law changes, figures are year-specific, and this is not individualized tax advice.
Every engagement produces the same three things: a written retirement income plan, a multi-decade tax projection, and a coordinated Social Security and Roth conversion sequence. For both of you.
Schedule Your ConsultationEight pieces of one plan, not eight engagements. See how they fit together or the five phases that deliver them.
The other seven: Retirement Income Planning, Tax-Efficient Withdrawal Strategy, Roth Conversion Analysis, Executive Retirement Planning, Social Security Optimization, Early Retirement Feasibility, Legacy Planning Coordination.
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