Myth: Roth Is Always Better

Is a Roth always the better choice? No, and the people who say it always is are skipping the one number the whole decision hinges on. Roth accounts are genuinely powerful. Tax-free growth, no required withdrawals during your life, a clean inheritance for your kids. But “always better” turns a real tradeoff into a slogan, and slogans cost money.

The actual decision in one sentence

A Roth makes sense when your tax rate today is lower than your tax rate will be when you’d otherwise pull the money out. That’s it. Everything else is detail.

With a traditional account you skip tax now and pay it on the way out. With a Roth you pay tax now and owe nothing later. So the entire question is a rate comparison: is your bracket higher today or in retirement? Pay the tax in the cheaper year. The Roth only wins automatically if you assume your future rate is always equal or higher, and for a lot of affluent households in their peak earning years, that assumption is just wrong.

When the traditional account wins

Picture a couple in their fifties at the height of their careers, income deep in the 32% or 35% federal bracket. For 2026 the 35% bracket runs past $400,000 of taxable income for joint filers, and the top 37% rate starts at $768,700. Telling them to fund a Roth and pay tax at 35% today can be a mistake, because their retirement bracket may be far lower.

Here’s the second-order move the Roth-always crowd misses. That couple takes the traditional deduction now at 35%, retires, and then has a window. In the early retirement years, before Social Security and before required minimum distributions begin, their taxable income can drop sharply. That’s when they do Roth conversions, moving money from traditional to Roth and paying tax at 22% or 24% instead of the 35% they’d have paid during their working years.

Same dollars into a Roth, a third less tax, just by choosing the year. The standard deduction helps too. For 2026 it’s $32,200 for a married couple, $34,150 if both are 65 or older, so a slice of every conversion is effectively absorbed before the brackets even start. Skip the deduction at your peak rate and you may pay the most tax in the worst year for no reason.

The hidden price beyond the bracket

The rate comparison isn’t the only cost. Roth conversions and contributions raise your income in the year you make them, and that ripple reaches places people forget. A big conversion can push you over an IRMAA threshold and raise your Medicare premiums two years later. It can pull more of your Social Security into taxation. The Roth itself is still excellent. The timing of how you fill it is where the money is won or lost, which is exactly why I plan conversions around your other income, not in a vacuum.

There’s also a charitable wrinkle. If you give to charity in retirement, a traditional IRA has a trick a Roth can’t match. A qualified charitable distribution lets you send money straight from the IRA to a charity, satisfying your required withdrawal and keeping it off your return entirely. For 2026 you can move up to $111,000 a year that way. Convert everything to Roth and you give up that lever, because there’s nothing left in the traditional account to send.

The honest version

Roth is a fantastic tool and most people should have some. But “always better” hides the only question that matters: your rate now versus your rate later. For high earners the smart pattern is usually take the deduction at your peak bracket, then convert deliberately in the low-income years between retiring and your first required withdrawal. The Roth isn’t magic. It’s a bet on tax rates, and you should make that bet in the year the odds are in your favor.