dmertz
Level 15

Investors & landlords

Depends on whether or not this Roth IRA is the only Roth IRA.  If this is the only Roth IRA, it is entirely distributed and it has lost value since relative to that immediately after making the contribution, there would be excess contribution penalty since the penalty is based on the lesser of the amount of the excess contribution and the year-end balance in Roth IRAs.

 

To resolve the excess contribution properly, you could as the Roth IRA custodian to recharacterize the Roth IRA contribution to be a traditional IRA contribution instead, resulting in the custodian transferring to a traditional IRA the the amount of the contribution adjusted for investment losses, or by requesting a return of contribution from the Roth IRA, resulting in the loss-adjusted amount being distributed to you without any penalty (since there are no taxable gains attributable to the contribution).

 

If the Roth IRA currently has a $0 value, a recharacterization would accomplish nothing, but a return of contribution would make sense with a loss-adjusted distribution of $0 reported on a code J8 2020 Form 1099-R if done in 2020.

 

I'm not sure how a Roth IRA with a $0 value could receive any capital gains.  The investment performance must be calculated over the entire Roth IRA, so if the Roth IRA does not have a $0 value because the value include more than what was attributable to the $5,000 contribution for 2020, the recharacterization or return of contribution could have either a gain or loss depending on overall investment performance.

 

Contributing more makes no sense at all.

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