So long as you have any IRA account including a rollover IRA, you won’t be able to do a backdoor Roth IRA. And you want to do this before the government decides to take away the ability to do Backdoor Roth IRA
My primary point is; Nothing in the Pro-Rata rule prevents you from doing a Backdoor Roth IRA if you already have an IRA. What the Pro-Rata rule affects is the taxation if you are rolling over an IRA or 401k and have mixed pre-tax,post-tax monies in the account. It makes the transfer more complicated (potentially much more). I am going to need to check some claims that an aggregation approach is on all accounts simultaneously is used because that runs afoul of rules for reporting pre-tax and post-tax contribs within IRAs and taxing of such distributions (went through IRS rules, and what I have stated agrees with their statements – screw any CFP that says otherwise)..
My understanding is the aggregation rule applies within the account, not across multiple accounts – which would match how post vs pre-tax contribs are handled within an IRA as well as how distributions are taxed. If an account comprises pre-tax and post-tax monies, it is treated as an aggregate – just like in taking a distribution from that IRA. It is not possible to take a distribution from taxible or pre-tax monies selectively from within an IRA. NOTE: If you have post-tax money in an IRA, you have to do the form 8606, every year… (or should be reporting them). Pre-tax portion of an IRA is withdrawn tax free – but the total IRA is considered an aggregate, so tax is calc’d as a percentage of total funds that have not been taxed. Any growth is considered non-taxed within an IRA even though initial contributions may have been post-tax. (Exception being a Roth).
NOTE: The people claiming the funds of all IRA funds are considered as an aggregate may be mixing up a rule instituted 1/1/2015 that stated for doing rollovers, all the funds are considered as one for the sake of counting the frequency of rollovers – ie: you can rollover from any IRA/401k once in 12 month period, but you can’t rollover from IRA#1 and IRA#2 within a 12 month period, but could rollover IRA#1 and 12 months later rollover from IRA#2.
