Hosted by Wade Pfau, PhD, CFA, RICP - Founder of Retirement Researcher.

The Basics of Income Taxes
Tax Diversification
Asset Location
Obtaining Tax Advantages for Taxable Assets
Withdrawals from Tax-Advantaged Retirement Plans
Tax-Efficient Retirement Distribution Strategies
Pitfalls to Monitor When Generating More Taxable Income
Other Planning Ideas
An Example for Tax Bracket Management
In our workshop, Creating Tax-Efficiency for Retirement Income, we will start with covering the basics of income tax and our progressive tax system. We will talk about tax advantages available in the tax code and how to create tax diversification between taxable, tax-deferred, and tax-exempt accounts. Then we talk about asset location, or how to position our assets between different types of accounts. We also mention how to obtain tax advantages for taxable assets that go beyond the space available in tax-deferred or tax-exempt accounts. We will also walk through a number of issues for tax-advantaged retirement accounts, including required minimum distributions, early withdrawal penalties and their exceptions, rollovers, transfers, Roth conversions, and the pro-rata rules for IRAs with non-deductible contributions. We also cover the rules for net unrealized appreciation on employer stock. At this point, we dive into tax-efficient retirement distributions, including tax bracket management, strategic Roth conversions, and long-term capital gains harvesting. We also cover pitfalls with generating more taxable income, including the Social Security tax torpedo, increased Medicare premiums, and the net investment income surtax. We also talk about other tax strategies related to charitable giving, and discuss the widow tax penalty about how taxes will likely increase after the death of a spouse. We will finish with a detailed example to show how more tax-efficient retirement distributions (strategic Roth conversions and tax bracket management) can extend retirement portfolio longevity significantly (by 6 years in the example).