dmertz
Level 15

Retirement tax questions

If the payment was deposited directly into the IRA (or directly used to fund the IRA annuity), you could take the position that this constituted a trustee-to-trustee transfer.  However, the proper way to identify the payee in a trustee-to-trustee transfer of an IRA is to name the IRA itself, such as "Annuity Life Company FBO Your Name IRA" and even perhaps include the account number.  Identifying the payee in this way makes it improper for the money to be diverted to any non-IRA account by accident or as an intermediate step that would constitute you yourself having constructively received the distribution.

 

By having the $200,000 on line B2 of TurboTax's 1099-R form, TurboTax excluded the $200,000 from the taxable amount on 2018 Form 1040 line 4b and included the word ROLLOVER next to the line.  This is how it was reported as a distribution and rollover on your tax return, not as a trustee-to-trustee transfer that would have appeared nowhere on your tax return because a trustee-to-trustee transfer results in the sending custodian not issuing any Form 1099-R at all.

 

A trustee-to-trustee transfer has no bearing on the one-rollover-per-12-months rollover limitation because it is not a rollover.  Done properly, IRA custodian should not have issued any Form 1099-R reporting the transfer to Betterment and you can disregard it.

 

Also, if any of the originating or destination accounts was an account in a qualified retirement plan rather than in an IRA, that distribution and rollover (always reportable) is disregarded with respect to the one-rollover-per-12-months rollover limitation.  The limitation only applies to IRA-to-IRA rollovers.  (I mention this because some people confuse qualified retirement plans with IRAs.)

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