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Regardless of income, is there any reason not to do a back-door Roth if you can afford it? Since you are paying tax on that income used for the contribution either way, it seems that there is only upside--all earnings on that Roth will be tax-free.
Is this correct or am I missing something?
There are some pitfalls to be aware of, as I recently found. The irs does not distinguish between your different Ira accounts when assessing taxes on conversions. If, in addition to funding a traditional Ira with post-tax dollars, you have traditional ira's that were funded with pre-tax dollars, your conversion to Roth will create a taxable event for the pre-tax traditional accounts. An often-cited example would be if you had an employer-sponsored retirement plan (401k for example) that was funded on a pre-tax basis, that you rolled over to a traditional Ira after you left that employer. If this applies to you, I recommend further reading on the pro-rata rule. If you don't have any pre-tax traditional iras, I am not aware of any issues with the backdoor Roth approach. For more info -- https://www.kitces.com/blog/the-impact-of-the-ira-aggregation-rule-on-after-tax-distributions-roth-conversions-60-day-rollovers-rmds-and-72t-payments/.
Assuming your IRA contributions are non-deductible and you have no deductible portion - yes, you're right.
