Yet another ROTH conversion question

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I put my $6K after tax in a traditional IRA. Can I do a backdoor ROTH?

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What tax year? If you are trying to do a backdoor roth for a 2020 trad IRA contribution, then you've missed your window.

If it's for this current year(2021), then sure you can always convert your trad IRA to a roth IRA.

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If so, do I have to pay yet more tax on that $6K in order to do it?

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Maybe. Do you have other balances in a trad IRA, sep-IRA, simple IRA? IF the answer is yes, then you will likely owe taxes on the conversion based due to pro-rata implications. You will also owe any taxes on capital gains from the time you've made the contribution to the time you've converted it.

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What tax year? If you are trying to do a backdoor roth for a 2020 trad IRA contribution, then you've missed your window.

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Doesn't he have until the tax filing date?

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Doesn't he have until the tax filing date?

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He has until the tax filing date to make the initial Trad IRA contribution, but the conversion happens as of the actual date.

So he can do this, but it will be spread over two tax years. On his 2020 return, he'll report the non-deductible contribution on Form 8606. On his 2021 return, he will report the conversion using Form 8606.

The math should still work, the reporting is just different.

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Doesn't he have until the tax filing date?

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Technically you can still do a conversion up until your tax filing date. However for the purposes of a backdoor roth, it's better if you can do the conversion prior to Dec 31. It becomes a lot less clean if you wait to do the conversion.

When you do the conversion/form 8606, it asks for your basis of your trad IRA accounts as they were on Dec 31 of that tax year. When doing a backdoor roth, you want that basis to be 0.

If you do the conversion, after Dec 31, then you'll need to report that your basis was $6k(or whatever your contribution was), which may have tax implications.

You can still do it, but it's not as clean. I think you essentially have to fill out an 8606 for both tax years and make sure you assign the right basis when you do the conversion.

Another scenario:

TIRA (and all other traditional) balance is at zero on December 31, 2020

Need to make non-deductible TIRA contribution for 2020 (between Jan 1 and April 15, 2021--wish I had done it before year end but here we are) to convert to roth.

Also pretty sure that 2021 will need the same treatment.

Question is this: can I contribute (right now) $12,000 total ($6k for 2020 and $6k for 2021), and immediately convert all of this to roth? I realize this should require form 8606 for both tax years, but I just wanted to make sure there's nothing wrong with converting 2021 kind of early in 2021. TIA.