<prompt> Human: I am curious about why anyone would do a Roth IRA backdoor. I understand the purpose is to get around income limits, but the math doesnt seem to make sense. If my understanding is correct, these are the steps:- contribute to a traditional IRA and do not take a tax deduction- immediately convert traditional IRA to Roth IRA- pay taxes proportional to the amount you are converting vs. amount you have in all traditional IRAsTo make things simple, lets assume 25 tax rate.Example: I have 5000 in post-tax income. I have paid 6666 and 25 in taxes 1666 to get this income. I have 5000 in an existing traditional IRA. I deposit the post-tax 5k into a traditional IRA. I then convert the 5k to Roth. I now owe 50 500010000 of this conversion in taxes. At 25 tax rate, this would be 5000 x .50 x .25 625So, in addition to paying 1666 in taxes to get my income to be post-tax, I now have to pay an additional 625 5000 x 50 x 25 in taxes to convert this to Roth. How is this beneficial? Seems like I am getting taxed twice somewhere here. Would this be better off in a taxable brokerage account where I could just pay reduced capital gains rate vs. trying to get it into a Roth?The only way I can see this being beneficial is if you have no existing IRA accounts making your Roth conversion cost nothing in taxes.  <response>: Roth money may be worth more than you think. Image stocks pay a 2 in dividends per year taxed at 15. This adds 2 15 0.3 drag to taxes each year. After 40 years probably longer if youre in your 20s since you wont withdraw everything the day you retire, tax drag results in a 1.00340 - 1 12.7 of your portfolio to taxes plus you have to pay capital gains, lets say 10 of the portfolio in capital gains taxes. This means that the Roth money is easily worth 20 more than money in a taxable account. Thats using pretty conservative numbers for capital gains and dividends since people doing backdoor IRAs are higher income. You can convert the 5,000 in your traditional IRA to Roth eliminating the extra backdoor taxes. Youd end up paying an extra 25 50 12.5 of the balance. Thats definitely worth it to get the extra 20 value from your Roth contribution. Even if you have a higher traditional IRA balance it may still be worth it depending on what your tax rate is now vs retirement. Converting the traditional balance to Roth also opens up the backdoor in future years without having to worry about the extra traditional IRA balance. 