Can I Convert $100,000 in a Roth IRA?

Down turns may be a wonderful opportunity and we'll show you why. Let's assume two individuals, Freddie and Teddy, each have $100,000 in a pre-tax IRA on January 1st. By June 30th, the market drops by 20%. Does that sound familiar? We've seen that story before. What you can see is that they both converted $20,000. They both did the same transaction and they both owe the same amount of taxes. That could be a six-figure difference just doing that one conversion.