oprah.chopra[at]gmail.com wrote on [Mon, 29 Oct 2007 13:25:24 -0500]:
- quote -

Ummm, you put 3K a year into each of them, for 6K total? The maximum you
can put into an IRA per year is a total of all IRA types. So, if the
annual max is 3K, it's 3K total, adding up traditional and Roth.

oprah.chopra[at]gmail.com wrote:

- quote -

This is primarily a tax question. Without looking it up, I recall there
is a 6% per year penalty on the excess contributions to the Roth IRA
until you take them back out. You will also probably have to pay regular
income tax on earnings, if any, due to the excess amount.

Contributions to the traditional IRA, assuming you didn't exceed the
annual maximum per person, will not be penalized but will simply be
considered non-deductible, once you amend your prior year's returns to
remove any deduction you claimed and pay the extra tax and
interest/penalties on same.

I recommend you contact a tax professional well before the end of the
year and then the custodian of your account. A small piece of good news
is that while there is a federal penalty, at least one state (CA) does
not have a penalty on excess contributions.

-Mark Bole

I opened a ROTH and traditional IRA a few years ago when my yearly
income was around 60k. I put 3k/year in them. Now my yearly income
has doubled, but I never changed my contributions. I have around 18k
in the IRA's. I have stopped putting any more money in them, but how
do I go about calculating how to fix this mess?

Seems like such a nuisance since you can hardly contribute much to
these IRA's and then they have all these complex rules on how much
you can contribute based on your income...