Selling a loser Mutual Fund and buying it back in a Roth Ira?

I bought a pretty poor performing fund about 9 months ago. (down 30%). I still believe in the fund but know it would better in a Roth (it has high turnover and a large distributions that really hurt my tax bill this yr). Can I sell this mutual fund now and immediatley buy it back in my roth to fully fund for 2007? Is there a time period I must allow for before I bought the fund back in my Roth? I have about $6500 in this mutual fund. I would probaly put the additional $2500 towards my 2008 roth and DCA into it for the next $2500. I would take the loss as a write off on my 2009 taxes. thanks

Any losses in a IRA cannot be written off for tax purposes. The only exception is if you completely close down the IRA and have a net loss. See the link. You would then have to wait 31 days before buying back using the wash rule. Also you are limited in how much you can put into a Roth IRA, so you would have to put the money back in over more than one year.
It's probably not worth it.

I think if you sell it for a loss, you must first wait 30 days before buying it back in order to take the loss deduction. Otherwise, the IRS will deem it as a wash-sale and disqualify the loss deduction.

yes you may sell a fund in a taxable account for a loss and buy it in a qualified account traditional/roth ira at any time. The wash sale rule only applies to taking a loss in the taxable account and buying the same security back with 31 days in that taxable account. I'm a financial advisor by profession, if you would like to speak more email me tommorow @ kyle.freda@morganstanley.com and we can get in touch.

cheers

Technically the answer is NO!

But IRA transactions do NOT get reported to the IRS, so your chance of getting caught is miniscule... unless you got flagged for other reasons or extremely abused the rule in some way.

The Wash-Sale rule isn't there to prevent you from selling in a taxable account and buying in an IRA. The IRS can't separate what you want to do and people who would use the loophole from selling stock at an unnaturally low price into an IRA where they wouldn't have to pay taxes.

You'd be better off buying the fund in the IRA and then waiting 31 days, since you like the fund...

ps: I can't print what I'd like to say about the bad advice from the guy at Morgan-Stanley.

Selling it (taxable) and buying it in your IRA are two separate and unrelated actions. There is no "time period" required between the two action.