Mark your calendar

If you have a traditional IRA that you'd like to convert to a Roth IRA, Congress has some great news for you. The somewhat arbitrary AGI cap on who is eligible for such a conversion ($100,000 for both singles and marrieds filing jointly) will be eliminated.

It's a revenue raising measure, see, because the conversion will be a fully taxable transaction. And to ease the pain, the taxes can be paid over two years. But as it turns out, Congress also realized that the new money isn't needed right away, because today's deficit is in a tolerable range. But in 2010, boy, that's when we're really gonna need the dough. So that's the year that the income cap comes off.

I'm marking my calendar now.