(772) 925-2833 arama@insurewitharama.com

Can I Do a Roth Conversion With No Earned Income?: Today’s Slott Report Mailbag

Aug 27, 2026

By Sarah Brenner, JD
Director of Retirement Education

Question:

Can I convert my traditional IRA to a Roth IRA even though I have no earned income for this year?

Answer:

While having earned income or taxable compensation is a requirement for making a tax-year contribution to an IRA or Roth IRA, there is no such requirement for doing a conversion. Anyone with a traditional IRA is eligible to convert to a Roth IRA.

Question:

I have both an IRA and a 401(k). Can I satisfy the required minimum distribution (RMD) from my IRA by taking additional funds from the 401(k)?

Answer:

Unfortunately, this will not work. While you may aggregate RMDs from multiple IRAs, you cannot aggregate IRA and employer plan RMDs. You must take your IRA RMD from your IRA and your 401(k) RMD from the plan.

If you have technical questions you would like to have answered, be sure to submit them to mailbag@irahelp.com, to be answered on an upcoming Slott Report Mailbag, published every Thursday.
https://irahelp.com/can-i-do-a-roth-conversion-with-no-earned-income-todays-slott-report-mailbag/

Note that the example above uses jQuery to trigger the function call, but you could trigger the function call using any method you wish.fbq('track', 'Lead'); - To track the lead event on the page. Like Thank you page after submitting the lead. If you have the Thank you page after submitting the lead then you can paste this code on the page and it'll track it as a successful lead. If instead you wanted to track a standard purchase event when the visitor clicks a purchase button, you could tie the fbq('track') function call to the lead button on your page, like this: