ROTH IRA oops!

[dannyhagglund]

A friend of mine, him and his wife opened a Roth contributed 11,000 in 2016. But, once tax time came around the found out they made to much money for the year to be eligible to contribute to a ROTH.

What should they do?

Thanks - Danny

[DavidAnnArbor]

Call up the trustee/bank and convert it to a taxable account contribution.

[MustacheAndaHalf]

You need to recharacterize the contributions.  Best approach is your friend calling the investment company which holds their Roth IRA account, and tell them you need to recharacterize your 2016 Roth IRA contributions to a Traditional IRA.  Your friend will probably be on hold getting transferred to a department that specializes in that, since it's not something the front line phone people can handle by themselves.

[MDM]

Read IRA recharacterization - Bogleheads and Backdoor Roth IRA - Bogleheads.