What's left, and who gets it
Balances at death, passing to adult children (non-spouse heirs).
What a dollar in each account is worth to them
Taxable assets step up in basis at death and pass essentially clean. Roth passes clean. The traditional IRA lands on your heirs under the 10-year rule — a tenth of it a year, stacked on top of their own salaries, at their own rates.
How the math works
The three deaths of a dollar
Taxable: under current law, cost basis steps up to market value at death. The decades of unrealized gain you carried simply evaporate as a tax liability; heirs can sell the day after the funeral and owe nothing on the growth. Roth: heirs must empty the account within 10 years, but every withdrawal is tax-free, and the account keeps compounding tax-free until they do — an inherited Roth is arguably the best asset in American tax law. Traditional: the SECURE Act ended the "stretch IRA." Non-spouse heirs must drain the account within 10 years, as ordinary income, on top of whatever they already earn. This tool assumes an even tenth per year — the schedule that avoids a bracket spike in year ten.
Why the rate is theirs, not yours
Your traditional balance was always going to be taxed at somebody's marginal rate. In retirement, yours might be 12–22%. Your children inherit it in their forties and fifties — peak earning years — where each slice stacks on a full salary. That's the quiet argument for spending the traditional account (or converting it) during your own low-bracket years: not avoiding the tax, but choosing whose rate applies. The withdrawal-order and Roth conversion tools on this site price exactly that choice.
What this tool is not
A snapshot under 2026 law, not an estate plan. Not modeled: federal estate tax (the exemption is far above these balances for most households, but it exists), state estate and inheritance taxes (a handful of states start much lower), spouse inheritors (who can roll the IRA into their own and are a different story — see the Widow's Penalty tool), minor or disabled beneficiaries (exempt from the 10-year rule), heirs' state income tax, annual RMDs some inheritors owe within the 10-year window when the owner died after their required beginning date (the even-tenths assumption approximately satisfies this), charitable bequests (a traditional IRA left to charity is taxed at nobody's rate — the cleanest gift in the code), and future tax law. Heirs' incomes are assumed equal and constant across the 10 years.