Sean Mullaney

That's exactly right, Robert.

And we live in sort of a golden age right now where you have the high standard deduction plus the senior deduction.

Now, that is temporary, to be fair, although I think the politics are likely to play out that some form of that thing is likely, but certainly not guaranteed to be extended in the future.

But you see, you know, we have examples of what we call tactical taxable Roth conversions, where we have a married couple in their mid to late 60s.

They have $101,000 of income before any Roth conversion, and that's mostly capital gains income.

It's spending them the taxable accounts first.

And then we add a $40,700 Roth conversion.

And I've done this at a conference.

So I say, oh, no, this couple's got $141,700 of adjusted gross income.

They're going to be taxed, right?

And I ask the audience, just mentally in your mind, picture what's their tax rate going to be?

How much federal income tax are they going to pay?

And of course, the surprise is they pay zero federal income tax.

Well, how can that be?

Well, the Roth conversion is essentially wiped out by the standard deduction and the senior deduction.

You structure your affairs so that you have low yield equities in the taxable account, maybe a small bank account, generating some interest income, but essentially the ordinary income, the Roth conversion, the non-qualified dividends, the interest income, can be kept at the senior deduction plus the standard deduction, so that wipes away the tax on that.

And then you can have significant capital gains that you're essentially, you're in your brokerage account.

You sell those brokerage account mutual funds or ETFs and trigger capital gains.

But recall, we have the 0% long-term capital gains tax bracket.

I believe for a married couple in the year 2026, that thing goes up to 98,900 of taxable income.