Dan Caplinger

For a lot of folks, including a lot of Motley Fool members, those later tax rates can be higher than what you're paying now, especially if you're early in your career, not paying much in taxes yet.

The benefit of basically putting off the tax benefit until later can outweigh what you're giving up today.

RMDs are a huge headache for a lot of retirees because once you breach H73, like it or not, need it or not, you have to start taking money out of those traditional IRA accounts, traditional 401k accounts and paying the tax.

So yet another reason why using a Roth lets you choose when you're paying the tax and get tax-free benefits later on.

So what a lot of retirees don't realize is that their taxable income goes toward determining more than just what they pay in taxes.

It also can trigger some other things.

For instance, with Medicare, if your income is above a certain amount, you're going to pay an extra amount

on your Medicare monthly premiums for Part B medical coverage, for Part D prescription drug coverage.

And so your withdrawals from a traditional IRA, from a traditional 401 , they count towards those income thresholds.

And so if you can put yourself in a situation where you are not necessarily having to

take that taxable income because it's coming from a Roth where it's not going to be added to those thresholds, then you may be able to avoid the higher Medicare premium.

Same thing with Social Security.

A lot of retirees don't realize part of your Social Security can be taxable, add to your taxable income, increase the amount that you have to pay Uncle Sam.

And again, the withdrawals that you take from traditional retirement accounts count toward...

meeting that threshold.

When you use Roth IRAs, Roth 401ks, that puts you where you can take those withdrawals.

It will not affect your taxable income in that way.

It will therefore potentially protect more of your social security from being taxed as well.

When you make contributions to a Roth, you can always withdraw the contributed amount without a tax impact.

And the IRS is pretty generous with that.