I'm looking for ways to reduce my tax bill after converting too much from tIRA to Roth IRA ...
In Dec 2018 I got to work on figuring out how much I would convert. I settled on $35,000 because (I thought) this number would leave me owing less than $100 after accounting for my wife's and my federal withholding, and keep us in the 12% tax bracket.
I hadn't yet received my W-2 so I added up the amount of federal tax withheld for 2018 from our last pay statements. Well, I screwed up .. either by making a typo, miscalculating, or misunderstanding.
Now I'm left with a tax bill of ~$3400.
I'm looking for ideas on how to mitigate my error.
Can I recharacterize from Roth IRA to tIRA? I've read that recharacterization has been eliminated for 2018, but threads
like this make me think that some form of recharacterization magic might still be possible (but probably not in a way that helps me).
I've considered contributing the max to both my wife's and my tIRAs .. this will reduce my tax bill by ~$1800.
Of course, I did my first ever conversion at exactly the wrong time for a rookie.
Otherwise, anyone have thoughts on other ways to reduce my tax bill?