Backdoor Roth IRA

A backdoor Roth contributes to a traditional IRA without deducting it, then converts to a Roth — legal route around the Roth income limits, since conversions have no income cap. The trap is the pro-rata rule: if you hold any other pre-tax IRA money, the conversion is taxed proportionally across all of it, so the manoeuvre only stays clean when your traditional IRA balance is otherwise zero.