I can't imagine where the post went. It would be impossible to recreate except that the text happened to be present in my browser history. Here it is:
Depending on your circumstances, you might be able to amend MFS to MFJ for 2016, 2017 and 2018 to avoid those being excess contributions. Even if you do that you'll still have excess contributions for 2014 and 2015 since those are closed tax years. The deadline for amending your 2016 tax return is generally April 15, 2020.
You must file Forms 5329 for 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 and pay the penalty for each of those years. You'll also have the 6% penalty for these excess contributions on your 2019 Form 5329 because they were not resolved before the end of 2019.
Assuming that you are under age 50 and cannot resolve any of the excesses by amending to MFJ, your Forms 5329 will show the following:
- 2014 excess $5,500, penalty $330
- 2015 excess $11,000, penalty $660
- 2016 excess $16,500, penalty $990
- 2017 excess $22,000, penalty $1,320
- 2018 excess $22,000, penalty $1,320
- 2019 excess $22,000, penalty $1,320
- (total of excess contribution penalties for all years $5,940)
As for your 2019 excess contribution, you have until the due date of your 2019 tax return, including extensions, to either obtain an explicit return of contribution or do a recharacterization to a traditional IRA of the contribution made for 2019 and avoid the excess contribution penalty for that contribution. You'll owe tax and potential early distribution penalty on any earnings required to be distributed with that returned contribution.
To resolve the excess contributions made for 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017, you must obtain a regular distribution of exactly the total of any excess contributions made for those years. You must do that before the end of 2020 to avoid another 6% penalty on this total for 2020. This distribution will be nontaxable because it is a distribution of your contribution basis.
The IRS does not seem to be in the habit of checking for excess contributions. It seems that they are perfectly happy to let you rack up yearly excess contribution penalties that they can come after you for at any time since there is generally no statute of limitations on the IRS being able to assess the penalty.
