Can You Convert an Inherited IRA to a Roth IRA?

Short answer: Non-spouse beneficiaries cannot. The law explicitly prohibits it. Surviving spouses can — but through a specific two-step process. Here's what the rule says and what non-spouses can do instead.

Why this surprises most people

When you inherit a traditional IRA, you know the distributions will be taxable. A Roth conversion would solve both problems at once: you'd pay taxes now, move the money into a Roth IRA, and future growth and distributions would be tax-free. The strategy is intuitive. Unfortunately, the Internal Revenue Code closes that door for everyone except surviving spouses.

The prohibition is in IRC § 408(d)(3)(C), which carves out inherited accounts from the general rollover rules. The 60-day rollover exemption — which lets you take a distribution, hold it for up to 60 days, and re-deposit it into another IRA — explicitly does not apply to amounts inherited from a non-spouse. Because a Roth conversion is structured under IRC § 408A as a distribution followed by a rollover contribution to a Roth IRA, the underlying rollover mechanism is unavailable. The result: you take the distribution, owe income tax on it, and cannot deposit it into any IRA.¹

The surviving spouse exception

Surviving spouses are treated fundamentally differently under the inherited IRA rules. Under IRC § 402(c)(9) and § 408(d)(3)(C), a surviving spouse may roll an inherited IRA directly into their own IRA — either a traditional IRA or a Roth IRA. They can also elect to treat the inherited IRA as their own under the treat-as-own election.²

This creates a genuine path to Roth conversion for spouses:

1. Keep the inherited IRA temporarily (useful if the spouse is under 59½ and needs penalty-free access before rollover — see the spousal rollover decision guide).
2. Roll the inherited IRA into your own traditional IRA — either immediately or once the need for penalty-free access passes.
3. Convert all or part of that traditional IRA to a Roth IRA using the standard IRC § 408A conversion. At this point it is no longer an inherited IRA; it is the spouse's own IRA, and the full range of planning tools applies.

A surviving spouse can also roll the inherited IRA directly into a Roth IRA in a single step — treating the transaction as a combination rollover and conversion, paying the income tax due on the full balance converted. Whether to do a one-step conversion, a two-step approach, or a partial conversion depends on the spouse's income in the year of conversion, projected future tax rates, and whether they need any pre-59½ penalty-free access from the inherited account.²

What non-spouse beneficiaries can do instead

The prohibition against converting an inherited IRA doesn't prevent non-spouse beneficiaries from achieving Roth-like outcomes over the 10-year SECURE window. The key insight: the inherited IRA and your own IRAs are separate. You can act on your own IRA while the inherited IRA depletes on its schedule.

The coordination strategy

Here is how most high-income non-spouse beneficiaries approach this in practice:

1. Take required or planned distributions from the inherited IRA each year. These distributions are ordinary income — you owe tax on them regardless.
2. Simultaneously, convert an equivalent amount from your own pre-tax IRA to a Roth IRA. The cash from the inherited IRA distribution is available to pay the income taxes owed on the own-IRA conversion.
3. Over the 10-year window, you've depleted the inherited IRA (as required by the SECURE Act), converted some or all of your own pre-tax IRA balance to Roth, and the tax cost is spread across years at (ideally) controlled marginal rates.

The inherited IRA distributions "fund" the Roth conversions indirectly — not by flowing into the Roth IRA, but by providing the after-tax cash that allows you to convert pre-tax IRA dollars without liquidating other assets. See the Roth Conversion Coordinator for a calculator that models this strategy across the full 10-year window.

QCD as a partial alternative for beneficiaries 70½ or older

If you are 70½ or older, you may make a Qualified Charitable Distribution (QCD) directly from your inherited traditional IRA to a qualified charity. A QCD is excluded from your taxable income and from MAGI — it is the only way to withdraw from an inherited traditional IRA without owing income tax on the distribution. The 2026 annual QCD limit is $111,000.³

A QCD counts toward both the annual RMD requirement (if applicable) and the 10-year depletion requirement. For charitably inclined beneficiaries on Medicare, this can be more valuable than a Roth conversion: it avoids not just income tax but also the IRMAA impact. See the inherited IRA IRMAA guide for how distributions and IRMAA interact.

Why the coordination strategy falls short of a direct conversion

There is one important asymmetry between a direct conversion and the coordination strategy: the inherited IRA distributions are taxable income even if you don't want them. Under the coordination approach, you're making the best of a forced taxable event — using it as an occasion to convert your own IRA simultaneously. But:

• If the decedent died before their Required Beginning Date, there is no annual RMD obligation — you have full flexibility over when within the 10-year window to take distributions. You can take distributions in low-income years and convert your own IRA in those same low-income years, achieving near-optimal tax efficiency.
• If the decedent died after their Required Beginning Date, annual RMDs from the inherited IRA are mandatory (see Inherited IRA RMD Rules). These required distributions create forced income that may stack with Roth conversion income and push you into higher brackets.
• A direct conversion (if it were allowed) would let you control the timing and amount precisely. The coordination strategy is constrained by whatever the inherited IRA's RMD schedule forces on you in mandatory-RMD situations.

What this means for the year-10 deadline

The SECURE Act 10-year rule does not require equal annual distributions in non-RMD situations — you must simply deplete the inherited IRA by December 31 of the 10th year after the original owner's death. If annual RMDs are not required in your situation, you can defer all distributions to year 10. But a year-10 lump-sum distribution has consequences: it stacks entirely on top of other income, creating a large spike in MAGI that affects income tax rates, Medicare IRMAA (two years later), Social Security taxation, and Roth conversion room. Most beneficiaries with meaningful other income are better served by spreading distributions and Roth conversions across earlier years when there is room below the next bracket threshold.

The 10-Year Withdrawal Optimizer models the equal, front-loaded, and back-loaded distribution strategies side by side — tax cost comparison included.

Can you convert an inherited Roth IRA?

No conversion is needed and none is possible. Inherited Roth IRAs are already Roth — distributions that meet the 5-year rule are income-tax-free. The same IRC § 408(d)(3)(C) prohibition applies (non-spouse beneficiaries cannot roll over an inherited Roth IRA), but it doesn't matter in practice because there is no tax benefit to converting an account that is already tax-free. The full rules for inherited Roth IRAs — including whether annual distributions are required and the optimal strategy of deferring to year 10 — are in the Inherited Roth IRA guide.

Summary: your options by beneficiary type

When to involve a specialist

The coordination strategy — taking inherited IRA distributions and simultaneously converting your own IRA to Roth — requires modeling across the full 10-year window. The optimal approach depends on your current and projected marginal rates, whether you have annual RMD obligations in the inherited account, your IRMAA exposure, your Social Security timing, your own IRA balance, and your state tax situation. There are multiple interacting decisions; getting them wrong in early years forecloses options in later years. A fee-only advisor who specializes in inherited IRA planning runs this analysis before the first distribution is taken.

Sources

1. IRC § 408(d)(3)(C) — Inherited IRA Rollover Prohibition. Subsection (C) provides that the 60-day rollover exemption in § 408(d)(3)(A) does not apply to any amount received by an individual from an individual retirement account or annuity if the individual received the amount as a beneficiary (other than the decedent's surviving spouse). Because Roth conversions under § 408A are structured as distributions followed by rollover contributions, the rollover prohibition blocks the conversion mechanism for non-spouse beneficiaries. Statutory text unchanged by SECURE Act or T.D. 10001.
2. IRS Publication 590-B — Distributions from Individual Retirement Arrangements. Covers surviving spouse rollover options, treat-as-own election, and Roth conversion eligibility for surviving spouses. Surviving spouses may roll over an inherited IRA to their own IRA (traditional or Roth), or elect treat-as-own. Non-spouse beneficiaries may not roll over, and may not convert. Updated for current year; verify page applies to the distribution year.
3. IRS — QCD Rules and 2026 Limit ($111,000). Qualified Charitable Distributions under IRC § 408(d)(8) are available to IRA owners and beneficiaries aged 70½ or older. The $111,000 limit is per individual, per year, indexed for inflation under SECURE 2.0 § 307. QCDs from an inherited IRA reduce the account balance and count toward any RMD obligation; the excluded amount never appears on Form 1040 as income.
4. T.D. 10001 — Final RMD Regulations (July 2024). Confirms: the 10-year rule under IRC § 401(a)(9)(H) requires full depletion by December 31 of year 10. Annual RMDs in years 1–9 apply only when the decedent died after their Required Beginning Date. The distinction between pre-RBD and post-RBD decedents governs whether distributions during the 10-year window are required or discretionary.

IRC citations verified as of May 2026. The rollover prohibition under § 408(d)(3)(C) has not been modified by the SECURE Act, SECURE 2.0, or T.D. 10001. Surviving spouse rollover and treat-as-own options have been available since the original IRA rules; nothing in recent legislation changed these.