Somebody should be doing the tax math on your retirement.

What we plan for

These decisions are connected. Moved one at a time they tend to undo each other, which is why the plan treats them as one problem instead of eight separate ones.

• Roth conversion timing and sizing. A conversion is taxed as income the year you do it, so the same move costs different amounts in different years, and the cheap years usually sit between the last paycheck and the first required distribution.
• Required minimum distributions. Distributions become mandatory at 73 for people born from 1951 through 1959 and 75 for those born in 1960 or later, and they land on top of everything else that is already on the return.
• Social Security taxation. How much of the benefit is taxed depends on the rest of your income, so a withdrawal can raise your real rate well above the bracket printed in the table.
• Medicare IRMAA. Medicare sets your premium from your income two tax years back, and the thresholds are cliffs, so a single dollar of extra income can cost a year of surcharges.
• Withdrawal sequencing. Which account you draw from first changes the tax on every other dollar in the same year, and the answer moves as the rest of the picture changes.
• The surviving-spouse bracket change. Unless a dependent child keeps qualifying-surviving-spouse status open, the survivor ends up filing as a single filer, with narrower brackets and a smaller standard deduction, often on income that barely fell.
• Charitable giving and QCDs. A gift sent straight from the IRA as a qualified charitable distribution stays out of income and can count toward a required distribution. A donor-advised fund cannot receive one, so the plan decides which gifts go which way.
• State tax. States treat retirement income very differently, and where you live can change the answer.

Do I have to move my money?

A Go Beyond Tax tax-planning engagement does not require you to move your investments or replace your current financial advisor. We build the tax plan and, with your permission, coordinate the tax recommendations with the professionals you already use.

Go Beyond Tax does not sell investments or insurance to its planning clients and earns no commissions from them. You pay a fixed fee for the tax work, quoted in writing before it begins.

In practice that means we share the tax recommendation with your advisor or custodian, and they handle the transaction. If you would rather we stayed out of that conversation entirely, we will.

Where you have to be

We work virtually with retirement tax-planning clients across the U.S. Meetings are by video and documents come in through a secure upload. Onboarding captures the state you live in, so anything that needs a state-specific rule check gets flagged before we plan around it.

What we usually ask for at the start: your last two tax returns, your account balances by type, your Social Security estimate, and a pension letter if you have one.

What you receive

A written plan, built on multi-year tax projections, that covers the Roth conversion, Medicare IRMAA, required minimum distribution and withdrawal sequencing decisions together rather than one at a time. Meetings are virtual.

Withdrawal sequencing, which account funds your spending and in what order, is part of the Comprehensive Plan. The Annual Retirement Tax Strategy is a separate engagement that provides ongoing planning and updates, including that year's conversion amount and withdrawal order, within its agreed service period.

How the Comprehensive plan gets built

Before we talk about Roth conversions or your future RMDs, we want to know what you want retirement to look like. How much do you want to spend? Do you want to travel, help the kids, retire a year earlier? Are you spending less than you could because you are afraid of running out? What do you want to be true for whichever of you is on your own one day?

We work through that over a few meetings, then project it: income and spending year by year, the account balances, the taxes inside it, and what is projected to be left for a surviving spouse and for your heirs. Then we build the tax strategy around those answers and compare it against doing nothing, on the same assumptions, in writing.

Sometimes that means converting more to Roth. Sometimes less. Sometimes it means taking a higher Medicare premium for a year or two because the projection is better on the other side. There is no standard answer. The point is to see your options with real numbers and make decisions that support the retirement you actually want. That is the Comprehensive Retirement Tax Plan. If you already have a financial advisor, you keep them; here is how that works.

What the math looks like

Take a married couple, both the same age, drawing $40,000 a year from a traditional IRA. Under 2026 law, the same $100,000 Roth conversion costs $12,360 of federal tax at 63, before Social Security starts, $18,013 at 68 once $48,000 of benefits are on the return, and $18,687 at 76 once a required distribution is already filling the low brackets. Same conversion, same law. The bill moves because the rest of the return moved.

That gap is the whole argument for planning the tax side ahead of the year instead of reacting to it. The Roth conversion analysis is where that particular decision gets worked out.

For the long version, see a couple with $1.5 million in IRAs run through four conversion plans for 26 years, every dollar shown, including what happens to the surviving spouse.

How fees work

Every service is a fixed fee, published in advance and quoted in writing before work begins. We do not bill by the hour. The Retirement Tax Snapshot is $750, the Retirement Tax Assessment is $1,500, the Comprehensive Retirement Tax Plan is $4,950to build the plan, with that tax year's returns included, and the Annual Retirement Tax Strategy is $3,250 a year, as a separate ongoing engagement after the Comprehensive Plan. The free consultation comes first, and Jim tells you which one fits, or that none of them do. What each service includes.

Who we are

Go Beyond Tax is the retirement tax-planning practice of Jim Swiech, CPA, a Certified Public Accountant licensed in New York. Go Beyond Tax is a brand of Swiech Consulting LLC, based in Lockport, New York. More about Jim.

The guides behind the plan

The same material we work through with clients, written out and free to read.

• Roth conversions in retirementThe full guide, a calculator, and a page per question.
• The RMD schedule at 73 or 75Age by age, what the IRS forces out and when.
• The 2026 IRMAA linesEvery Part B and Part D income line, and the appeal.
• The Social Security tax torpedoWhy your real rate runs above your printed bracket.
• The widow's penaltyWhat the survivor's brackets do to a plan built for two.
• How big can an IRA get before you owe federal tax?What a retired couple can draw before federal tax starts.
• The zero-tax line for retirees 65+Three deductions, and where the tax actually starts.
• The Social Security breakeven calculatorClaiming math with the tax put back in.
• Social Security at 62, 67 or 70The worksheet the breakeven charts skip.
• Working while on Social SecurityWhat the earnings test holds back before full retirement age.
• Which states tax Social SecurityAll 50 states, every rule and threshold.
• The printable conversion window tableThe same conversion priced at different retirement stages.