A former university professor and his schoolteacher wife living near Pittsburgh, are in their mid-70s and retired. They have more than enough money from pensions and Social Security to cover their expenses.

But since they each reached 70.5 years of age, the government has forced them, as it does everyone, to take a certain amount from their tax-deferred retirement accounts, known as a required minimum distribution or “RMD.”

Their financial advisor is Diane Pearson, with the local firm Legend Financial Advisors, and she has advised them to take the RMD and give it to charity to fulfill their philanthropic goals. This way, the couple would not have to pay income tax on the distributions and, furthermore, they’d get a tax deduction for what they give away. (Though this rule has expired since they used it, Congress may reinstate it before the end of 2014.)

Pearson also tells clients who don’t need their minimum distributions that they can reinvest the money in a taxable account. “They have to pay the income taxes on the RMD, but at least the withdrawal starts making money,” she says. “This can be a tough question for people who do not need the RMD as income.”

Lisa Colletti, the director of wealth management at Aspiriant LLC, headquartered in San Francisco, agrees that the solution to the RMD problem is not a simple one.

“This is not one of those no-brainer opportunities, but, if you look, you can find solutions,” Colletti says. “However, it can take a family awhile to get comfortable with the fact that they have to absorb the tax bill.”

Sometimes retirement accounts require novel thinking. One of Colletti’s wealthy client families converted half of a tax deferred retirement account worth $4 million into a Roth IRA, where no RMD is required. They did this at the same time they had suffered an operating loss on its business, and that offset the income tax they had to pay for the Roth conversion. That turned the business loss into a business boon.

“Investors also can use the volatile market to their advantage by converting tax-deferred accounts when they are valued at a lower level to minimize the tax,” Colletti says.

The mutual fund firm Vanguard, in its column “IRA Insights,” said that approximately 20 percent of its investors who take RMDs move the money to a taxable account because they do not need to spend it. If investors aren’t going to need the money from their traditional IRA, Vanguard recommends that they move it to a Roth before they are 70.5 years old so they can control when they pay the taxes.

“A Roth IRA can be used as a tax diversifier,” says Maria Bruno, a senior investment analyst in Vanguard’s Investment Strategy Group. “If a client is worried about the RMD, he can consider a series of Roth conversions. You are accelerating the tax liability, but the conversions could be made in a year when the client is in a lower tax bracket.”

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