SmartAsset and Yahoo Finance LLC may earn commission or revenue through links in the content below. People with Roth IRAs generally have to wait five years before withdrawing earnings from their account. But the devil is in the details, and for this particular rule, getting those details can be surprisingly difficult. For starters, the IRS has three different five-year rules that apply to Roth IRAs. One of them, the conversion rule, appears self-contradictory. The IRS doesn’t publish clear instructions ...