I recently received a CP2000 Notice from the IRS for my 2016 1040 return. Since I turned 70 1/2 that year I was required to take a minimum distribution (RMD) from my IRAs. For that year I elected to take the full RMD as a Qualified Charitable Distribution (QCD) and supplied my IRA trustees with the required instructions to send checks directly to a set of eligible charities. I waited until after I turned 70 1/2 in that year to make these distributions (which were well under the $100K cap). I used TurboTax Deluxe to file in 2016 and believe I entered all the 1099-R information into TTAX correctly. Form 1040 line 15a shows the total distribution, line 15b; Taxable Amount has "QCD" in it and the amount '0' in the column. My return also includes the Form 1099-R Summary showing the distribution as non-taxable QCD (line 1e).
The CP2000 from the IRS indicates that I failed to report that year's IRA distributions as taxable, and would like me to pay them a fairly hefty sum for the 2016 tax plus interest and penalty. What has me somewhat confused is that the CP2000 makes no mention of the fact that my 2016 return claimed this distribution as a QCD? This leads me to believe that the procedures TTAX has adopted regarding reporting QCD type IRA distributions are insufficient to fully inform the IRS (or IRS computer systems?) regarding the nature of this type of IRA distribution. Since I used the QCD option again for my 2017 RMD, and again used TTAX to file, I am understandably concerned that I will be receiving another CP2000 in the future for my 2017 return. Perhaps in years that I make QCD from my IRA I should file by mail instead of eFile and include an extra statement with QCD details (copies of cancelled checks; letters of acknowledgement; etc). Perhaps IRA trustees could be equipped with a means to include an indication that the IRA distribution was taken as a QCD?
I have copies of the checks that were issued from my IRAs as well as acknowledgement from the charitable organizations which I copied and returned to the IRS with the "I don't agree with ..." box checked together with a statement of explanation. The deadline for responding is the end of this month (a week from today) and the USPS tracking for the response I sent them indicates the IRS office in Andover, MA, received this a couple of weeks ago. So far I have heard nothing (no letter or phone call -- the response form had a box to include my phone numbers and "best time to call" field).
In summary:
?(1) Why was the TTAX procedure for designating my IRA as a QCD insufficient for the IRS to detect this?
(2) If there is anyone else on this site who has experienced this QCD problem could you indicate how long you needed to wait to hear back from the IRS and what the outcome was?
