I appreciate the vote of confidence, @dmertz. The calculations seem daunting since, like you said, the account value fluctuates daily. Though, I was able to download the historic daily value of my TD account which is key for making these calculations. I contacted TD today to ask if they can tell me what time of day the account value reflects for any given day, and I also reached out to my HSA custodian to see if they can tell me what time of day my contributions were processed for the first contribution of each year. I know the dates, but it seems I need to also know the time to determine what the account value was "immediately before" the first contribution of the year, which is required for the calculation. (My investments were all in index ETFs and the account value sometimes fluctuates by more than $100 on any given day, so I want to ensure I'm not off by even one day.)
However, the other part that still makes the calculations seem daunting is your previous message where you said the calculation will depend on when the $475.01 is removed for 2021. I haven't looked into it enough yet to understand how/why/if this would affect the numbers I provide the IRS for 2022 or 2023. It was my original understanding that my custodian would remove all the contributions at the same time. However, do you know if the calculations would be more straightforward if I were to stagger the removals? For example, would it be better to remove the 2021 excess today, wait a week to remove the 2022 excess, and wait another week to remove the 2023 excess? Or would it not make a difference? Thank you.
