how recharacterization works
a recharacterization lets you treat a regular contribution that you made to a roth ira or a traditional ira as one that you made to another type of ira for example if you contributed 7 000 to your roth ira the first ira you could recharacterize it as a 7 000 contribution made to your traditional ira the second ira note that 7 000 is the contribution limit to an ira for 2024 6 500 for 2023 2you can t recharacterize employer contributions under a simplified employee pension sep ira or savings incentive match plan for employees simple ira plan as contributions to another ira 1recharacterizing a contribution from one type of ira to another gives you the opportunity to change your mind or correct a mistake say you contributed to a roth even though your income was too high you have until the due date for your federal income tax return including any extensions for the year when you made the first contribution to recharacterize your contribution as long as you recharacterize your contribution by this deadline you can treat the contribution as made to the second ira for that year this means that you can effectively ignore the contribution you made to the first ira 1the year when you made the first contribution is the tax year to which that contribution relates not necessarily the year when you actually made the contribution remember that you generally have until april 15 to make a prior year contribution 1to recharacterize a contribution ask your ira custodian the financial institution holding your ira to transfer the amount including the contribution and related earnings to a different type of ira the recharacterization can occur either within the same institution if you use one custodian for both iras or via a trustee to trustee transfer if different providers maintain the iras 