Hi everyone,
My husband and I unexpectedly had several large windfalls in 2018, so we became ineligible to contribute to our Roths, even though we had already put a couple thousand in each. We have since called and recharacterized these 2018 Roth contributions as Traditional IRA contributions. Because of said windfalls, we are now in a position to fill up our traditional IRAs to the 2018 limit.
My question is: if we fill up our Traditional IRAs and then convert them back to Roth, can we claim the $11,000 deduction in income FY 2018 and then count the $11,000 conversion as extra income FY 2019? Since we will earn quite a bit less in 2019 than we did in 2018, this makes sense, but I don't know if this is how it works. This part of the tax code (recharacterizations, conversions, etc) is incredibly confusing to me.
Thanks in advance.