How to Unlock Charity

[yachi]

Are there any financial tricks to moving IRA funds to charity without it becoming income?  The only thing I'm seeing is a Qualified Charitable Distribution (QCD), but it's age restricted to older than 70 1/2.

We live on a budget of around $60K to $65K, and have a stache of about $2.5M, but almost 93% of it is in tax advantaged accounts.  It's in mostly IRAs with a tiny bit in a 401(k) and an HSA we no longer use.

We use a Roth Conversion Ladder to get our income, and this year we're withdrawing about $80K because it allows us to still qualify for healthcare and firms us up for inflation over the next 5 years.  One year in 5 we might need to take a withdrawal with an early penalty because we had 4 and not 5 years' income saved outside retirement accounts.

[Catbert]

I am reasonably sure that QCDs are the only way to get IRA money to charities without paying taxes on it first.  It's pretty magical once you turn 70.5 since you can claim the standard deduction and fulfill RMDs.

You could donate from the 7% that's not in tax advantaged accounts by using a DAF.  Since that's such a small % of your stache you may not want to to use it for charity.